Page:Floating City (1904).djvu/161

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A FLOATING CITY.
119

the violence of the tempest. After several queer movements, twisting myself like an analide, I reached the upper-deck where I buttressed myself, after the doctor's fashion. "We are in for it!" cried he to me; "this will last. Heigh ho! this 'Great Eastern!' Just at the moment of arrival, a cyclone, a veritable cyclone is commanded on purpose for her."

The Doctor spoke in broken sentences, for the wind cut short his words, but I understood him; the word cyclone carried its explanation with it.

It is well known that these whirlwinds, called hurricanes in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, tornadoes on the coast of Africa, simoons in the desert, and typhoons in the Chinese Sea, are tempests of such formidable power, that they imperil the largest ships.

Now the "Great Eastern" was caught in a cyclone. How would this giant make head against it?

"Harm will come to her," repeated Dean Pitferge. "Look, how she dives into the billows."

This was, indeed, the exact position of the steam-ship, whose stern disappeared beneath the mountains of waves, which swept violently against her. It was not possible to see to any distance: there were all the symptoms of a storm, which broke forth in its fury about seven o'clock. The ocean heaved terrifically, the small undulations between the large waves entirely disappeared under an overwhelm-