El balandro se acercaba ahora rápidamente a la región de las calmas ecuatoriales, y la fuerza de los alisios iba disminuyendo. Pude ver por las ondas que se había establecido una contracorriente. Calculé que esta era de unas dieciséis millas al día. En el corazón de la contraorilla la velocidad era mayor que la que se dirigía hacia el este.
September 14 a lofty three-masted ship, heading north, was seen from the masthead. Neither this ship nor the one seen yesterday was within signal distance, yet it was good even to see them.
On the following day heavy rain-clouds rose in the south, obscuring the sun; this was ominous of doldrums.
On the 16th the Spray entered this gloomy region, to battle with squalls and to be harassed by fitful calms; for this is the state of the elements between the northeast and the southeast trades, where each wind, struggling in turn for mastery, expends its force whirling about in all directions.
Making this still more trying to one’s nerve and patience, the sea was tossed into confused cross-lumps and fretted by eddying currents. As if something more were needed to complete a sailor’s discomfort in this state, the rain poured down in torrents day and night.
The Spray struggled and tossed for ten days, making only three hundred miles on her course in all that time.
I didn’t say anything!
El 23 de septiembre, la hermosa goleta Nantasket, de Boston, procedente de Bear River y con destino al Río de la Plata, cargada de madera y recién salida de las calmas ecuatoriales, dio alcance al Spray, y habiendo cruzado su capitán unas pocas palabras, siguió navegando. Estando el casco de aquella muy adherido por mariscos, atrajo consigo peces que venían siguiendo al Spray, el cual estaba menos provisto de esa clase de alimento.