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the sea, cools. Cooling, high up there, its moisture spouts out of it in rain. Now, when the water in air condenses, it releases the energy that held it there, just as truly as the explosion of petrol releases energy. Millions of horse-power up there loose. As in a petrol-motor, that energy is translated into motion: up rises the boundless balloon still higher, faster spins the vortex.
    Thus the spin of the Earth is only the turn of the crank-handle which starts it: the hurricane itself is a vast motor, revolved by the energy generated by the condensation of water from the rising air.
    And then consider this. Anything spinning fast enough tends to fly away from the centre—or at any rate, like a planet round the sun, reaches a state of balance where it cannot fly inwards. The wind soon spins round the centre of a hurricane so fast it can no longer fly into that centre, however vacuous it is. Mere motion has formed a hollow pipe, as impervious as if it were made of something solid.
    That is why it is often calm at the centre of a hurricane: the wind actually cannot get in.
    So this extraordinary engine, fifty miles or more wide, built of speed-hardened air, its vast power generated by the sun and by the shedding of rain, spins westward across the floor of the Atlantic, often for weeks together, its power mounting as it goes. It is only when its bottom at last touches dry land (or very cold air) that the throttle is closed; no more moist air can be sucked in, and in a few days, or weeks at most, it spreads and dies.
IV
    But in November the conditions are seldom right, in those latitudes, for all the several stages of the forming of a true hurricane. The process occasionally starts: but then it dissipates, it dies, it becomes a mere “depression” (most depressions that reach England are really such dead or aborted hurricanes).
    The first weather-reports evidently expected that this disturbance would be no exception. But the “Archimedes” had already left far behind the prognosticated path of the storm. Such storms, moreover, usually re-curve towards the right-hand, not the left. Yes, by every rule of the game they should be clear of all trouble by now.
    But at nine o’clock on that November morning of 1929, the strength of the wind was found to be still increasing; so it was plain that something quite unusual was happening. First, this was developing into a true hurricane; and second, it was not at all where it was thought by the pundits to be. Either it had changed its course prodigiously, and in the wrong direction, or else—the notion flashed through Captain Edwardes’s mind—this was not a single hurricane but a twin: he was being rapidly overtaken by a second and far more powerful vortex, not the recorded vortex at all.
    He had told his chief officer, an hour before, that if the barometer continued to fall he should heave-to. The ship could thresh on, surely; but there was nothing to gain by subjecting it to such unnecessary strain. Better point her nose into the wind, keep her engines running just hard enough to hold her there, and ride it out. For the process should not be long; a terrific gale for a few hours from one quarter; then a short time of calm while the centre passed over: and then the wind from the other quarter, gradually weakening as the storm left them behind.
    At nine o’clock therefore, as the barometer still fell, and the steady direction of the wind showed that they were in the direct track of the storm, Captain Edwardes headed her round north-east and north, with her nose splitting the gale, to ride it out.
    [1] The earth is a ball, turning about an axis: so a point on its surface near the Equator is moving faster than a point further from the Equator. The border of a system of air, therefore, which is nearest the Equator, will show a tendency to lag behind the border which is over a slower-moving part of the Earth’s surface: and, if the system is limited,