The sun poured down so that the heat pierced our awnings as though no awnings had been there, and the breeze which the ship created by her motion seemed like the blast from a furnace. The pitch oozed from the seams of the planking on the deck, and the deck itself became blistering hot to one’s feet. There was not the least stir of the sails and only the faintest motion of the ship from side to side. Respiration became difficult, and, as I looked about, I could see the passengers and sailors yawning and gaping in the effort to draw in their breath. All the metal about the ship became hot, especially the brass. If you touched it, it almost seemed to raise a blister, and the spot with which you touched it was painful for hours.

“We passed a ship becalmed in the doldrums, as this region is called, and she looked more like a painted ship upon a painted ocean than any other craft I ever saw. Her sails were all hanging loose, and so were all the ropes, and lines, and halyards from one end of the ship to the other. She was as motionless as if she were tied up to a dock in harbor, and there was very little sign of life about her anywhere. I asked one of our officers how long that ship had probably been there and how long she was liable to stay.

“‘That’s a question, young man,’ he replied, ‘that I can’t answer very surely. She may have been there a day or two only, and may stay only a day or so, and then, again, she may have been there a week or a month; we can’t tell without speaking her, and we are not particularly interested in her, anyhow.’”

Then he went on to explain that ships have been becalmed at the Equator for two months and more, lying all the time in a dead calm, just like the one through which we were passing.

“Two weeks,” he said, “is a fair time for a ship to stay in the doldrums, and you can be sure it is quite long enough for passengers and crew.

“Passengers and crew sometimes die of the heat, and existence under such circumstances becomes a burden. There are stories about ships that have been in the doldrums six or eight months at a time, but I am not inclined to believe them; for a man to stay in this terrific heat for that length of time would be enough to drive him crazy.

“The steamer was three days in the calm belt of the Equator before we struck the southeast trades, and had a breeze again. I don’t want to repeat my experiences with the doldrums.

“One day I heard a curious story about an incident on board an American ship not far from the Cape of Good Hope. She was from Calcutta, and bound to New York, and her crew consisted of American sailors, with the exception of two Indian coolies who had been taken on board at Calcutta because the ship was short-handed. One of these coolies had been put, one in the starboard and the other in the port watch, and everything had been quiet and peaceable on board the ship until the incident I am about to describe.

“One night the ship was sailing quietly along, and some of the men noticed, or remembered afterwards, that when the watches were changed, the coolie who had been relieved from duty remained on deck. Shortly after the change of watch, the two mates of the ship were standing near the lee rail and talking with each other, when the two coolies came along and one of them made the remark that he was sick. This remark was evidently a signal, for instantly one of the coolies drew a knife and stabbed the first mate to the heart, while simultaneously the other coolie sprang with a knife at the second officer and gave him several stabs in the chest.

“The first mate fell dead at the stroke of the knife, but the second mate had sufficient strength left to crawl to the companionway leading to the captain’s room, where he called out, ‘Captain Clark!’ ‘Captain Clark!’ and then ceased to breathe.

“The captain sprang from his bunk, and rushed on deck in his night-clothes. At the top of the companion-steps he was violently stabbed on the head and seized by the throat; he was quite unarmed and struck out with his fists at the face of his assailant, hoping to blind him. The coolie continued to stab him, and the captain started back down the steps until he slipped in the blood that covered them, and fell into the cabin, with a terrible wound in his side. He then crawled to where his revolver was, and started up the steps; when half way up, a man rolled down the steps against him and knocked him over.

“The captain thought it was the coolie, but it proved to be one of the sailors, who was frightened half to death. All he could say was, to beg of the captain to save him.

“The captain had his wife and child on board, and his wife was roused by the tumult. She came to her husband’s aid and proceeded to bind up his wounds. While she was doing this one of the coolies smashed in the skylight, and would have jumped into the cabin had not the captain fired at him with his revolver and drove him away.

“The next thing the coolies did was to murder the man at the wheel and fling his body overboard. Then they murdered the carpenter and a sailor and disposed of them the same way. Including the two mates, five men were slain and four others were wounded. The wounded men and the rest of the crew barricaded themselves in the forecastle for protection, and there they remained the rest of the night and all through the next day. The captain and his wife and child stayed in the cabin.

“The two coolies were in full possession of the ship from a little past midnight until eight o’clock of the following evening. One of them, venturing near the skylight, was shot in the breast by the captain, and then the two coolies rushed forward and threw a spar overboard. One of them jumped into the sea and clung to the spar, while the other dropped down into the between-decks, where he proceeded to set the ship on fire. Seeing this, the sailors who had barricaded themselves in the forecastle broke out, and two of them proceeded to hunt the coolie down with revolvers. They hunted him out and shot him in the shoulder, and then he jumped overboard and joined his companion. Shots were fired at the two men, and soon afterward they sank.

“The fire got such headway that it could not be put out. Finally a boat was provisioned and lowered; the crew entered it, and after waiting about the ship during the night in the hope that the flames might bring assistance, they put up a sail and headed for St. Helena. Thus was a ship’s crew of twenty-three people overawed and rendered helpless by two slender coolies, whom any one of the Yankee crew could have crushed out of existence in a very short space of time.

“The steamer passed near Ascension Island, but did not stop there. This island is entered in the British Navy List as a commissioned ship. It is nearly three thousand feet high, very rocky and well supplied with fresh water. Ships often stop there for a supply of water and such fresh provisions as are obtainable. The climate is said to be very healthy, and when the crews of British naval vessels are enfeebled by a long stay on the African coast, they go to Ascension Island to recruit their strength.”

Ned and Harry were very desirous of visiting the island of St. Helena, which became famous as a prison and for many years the grave of Napoleon. They were disappointed on ascertaining that the ship would not stop there, and the officer of whom they made inquiry said there was nothing to stop there for. “The island is not of much account,” he said, “and the natives have a hard time to make a living. In the days of sailing ships it was a favorite stopping place and the inhabitants did a good business. The general introduction of steamships, along with the digging of the Suez Canal, have knocked