In Hazard Read Online Free PDF

nowadays was a process of cramming for examinations, and counting groceries.
    Towards the evening it was blowing a whole gale. That was the maximum that one was likely to get, now the hurricane season was past. The seas were large enough to set “Archimedes” pitching and rolling; and if there had been passengers on board they would have lain mute and unsavoury in cabins, or half-frozen in deck chairs and lacking their usual good looks: or (a few of them) would have walked very fast up and down the deck, greeting each other heartily with hard grins, like diminished vikings. But there were no passengers on board the “Archimedes,” not even pilgrims; and the only person who was sick was Thomas, and he did it decently and privately in the heart of the foghorn.
    The reason for this wind was apparent when the wireless weather-report was received. A “tropical disturbance” was centred some hundreds of miles to the eastward: in other words, a circular system of gales round a central focus of low pressure, such as might, earlier in the year, have quickened to hurricane-force.
    But the report described this one as of slight intensity and small area, and only shifting very slowly to the westward. In the records of the last fifty years, no hurricane of any magnitude has occurred in the month of November: the depressions always fill up and the wind dies away. And this was actually the middle of November. Nevertheless, caution being the watchword of the Sage Line, Captain Edwardes deflected his southerly course somewhat to the westward, to keep right out of its way. Not that a hurricane was remotely likely: not that a ship like “Archimedes” would care two hoots for a hurricane if it came. But however small the risk of danger, it is a navigator’s duty to render it even smaller.
    During this night the gale should blow itself out; and during the next night they were due in Colon. A slight rise in the barometer, which occurred late in the evening, proved conclusively that the gale must shortly be left behind.
    But no: at six in the morning the barometer began to fall again, and the wind to blow really quite hard. To have continued trying to pass to the westward of the bad weather would no longer have been prudent, since there were reefs that way; and it is even more important to keep away from reefs than to keep away from winds. Colon was not very far off now, and the weather-reports from Colon offered gentle breezes and fine weather to anyone who would call and fetch them. So the new course set was south true, in order to get clear of the small area of disturbance in which it was quite plain they had somehow got involved.
    At eight o’clock that morning Mr. Buxton decided to go round the ship, to tidy up and make all snug; just in case they were in for a bit of a dusting. It was a routine precaution, nothing else: one does not, in a vessel like the “Archimedes,” adopt the sort of measures—such as fixing hatch-protectors—one would adopt in a more vulnerable little craft.
    But he found that Mr. Rabb had been before him, and had already made all snug off his own bat. Nevertheless he went round himself too: not that he did not trust Mr. Rabb, but the responsibility after all was his, as Chief Officer. He found nothing to better: he could only admire the thoroughness and efficiency with which the job had been done. “He’s a good officer,” he ruminated; and then found himself adding, he hardly knew why, “though a queer fish.”
    While Mr. Buxton was attending to the immediate situation, Captain Edwardes did some hard and rather perplexed thinking. For it was now necessary for him to foresee, in accordance with certain meteorological rules, what the disturbance was going to do.
    The days of Conrad’s “ Typhoon ” are passed: the days when hurricanes pounced on shipping as unexpectedly as a cat on mice. For one thing, the mice know more than they used