mss142-vasilevShishmarev-i3-006

- 56 -

generally done to shake the air, whereupon the waterspout falls
apart. Meanwhile, we removed all the upper sails, because such
kinds of phenomena, often ending with most terrible gusts of
wind, can break all the masts of a careless navigator. Our
attempt to produce a vibration of the air was crowned with
the desired sucess, and in a quarter of an hour, the water-
spout fell apart with a terrible noise, the black cloud
plunged into the ocean, and the sky remained as before, clear
and cloudless.

Our fears about a squall were unjustified; a light SE
breeze started blowing and we continued our trip slowly to the
NE. We hoped that this wind would finally take on real
strength of a trade wind, but this reasoning did not mater-
ialize. The wind died down completely again toward dawn of
the next day, and the calm continued until the 8th. The heat
was even less tolerable than before. During the day, the ther-
mometer stood at 30, 31 degrees, and at night went down no
more than two or three. At this place observations were made
concerning the temperature of water at different depths, and
it proved that at the depth of 100 sazhens it decreased only
from five to six degrees, and at a few feet from the surface,
only by one half or one degree. This--the walls of the ship
heated by the sun and the part underwater by water--made the
air inside the vessel so stifling and heavy that it was ab-
solutely impossible to remain below for long, and only under