my

their admiration of the sublime; and of a painter,* who lashed himself to the mast that he might draw the sea in a terrible storm. I take this to be chiefly babble; at any rate, for myself, I was sick and weak. It was cold, clothes were wet. I was collapsed, and doubled up with inanition, the fear of death was pressing heavily upon me, and I confess the artist-feeling did not so prevail over the man. I went below, and for the purpose of getting warm, for sleep was out of the question, I took to my berth. I first piled into it all the wet clothes I could find, (for we had no other,) and then tried to pull off my coat! But it was so wet, and the brig rolled so much, that after slitting it down the back, and tearing one sleeve nearly out, I gave it up and got in with all my clothes on, between the straw bed and the mattress, both of which were thoroughly saturated, and in less than an hour, I found myself in a sort of steam bath of very comfortable temperature. About every

quarter of an hour during the night I heard the man on the watch give a cry of warning to those at the pumps, followed by the tumbling of a heavy sea on deck, and then a lurch of the vessel, which it took all my holding on to keep from throwing me out of my berth. Then the water streamed down through the hatches to increase the quantity in the hold, bearing with it mollusca or some phosphoric matter, which left ghastly streaks of light on the planks, or rather looked like pale, liquid fire, trickling down the bulk-head. Our great danger was that in lurching, on account of these heavy seas, the brig would throw her masts out, or as the mate afterwards expressed it, "shake the sticks out of herself," and I was dreading all night to hear them fall, every time we shipped a sea. My mind, however, was not exclusively occupied by these fearful details, nor, as I have remarked before, by the dreaded catastrophe.. At times some scrap or other, such as,

"Backward and forward half her length,

With a short uneasy motion,"

would suddenly come into my head, and in a moment I was striving, like a boy reciting at school, to recal the succeeding lines. That ode of Horace, containing,

*

"Illi robur et æs triplex,"

Joseph Vernet, the French painter of Sea-scenes.

of which I could remember at first only this one line, haunted me thus for a long time. My memory seemed to take it up on her own account, with the obstinate determination to conquer it, and was succeeding better than I am able to do at this moment, when another great sea and a lurch of the brig put it to flight. At another time I found myself very busy with the ballad, of which the following is a

It soon struck me, that it was very ridiculous and inappropriate to be thinking of old ballads, situated as I was; but a moment after, there it was again, buzzing through my mind to a merry tune,

"I on the sea, and thou on the land," &c.

and I felt somewhat like poor Christian who, do what he would, could not but listen to the horrid whisperings of the devils, as he was going through the valley of the shadow of death, though I confess his was the more aggravated case.

You must not consider what I have just written as altogether trivial. It appears to me that these and similar phantasies, varying no doubt according to our various habits of mind, are the kindly devices of nature to draw away our thoughts from the one terrible question, the sword hanging by the hair, which, fall or not, it is useless and intolerable to contemplate. The captain and I interchanged but few words during the night, for as I said before, he seemed testy when disturbed. I once suggested the closing of one of the hatches more securely, in order to keep out the water; but he, seeming quite indifferent whether it was done or not, said I might call the men if I chose; and then, after a pause, added, "what is the use in fretting? I can't save your life." The men suffered much from exposure, and incessant exertion, having all been on deck the greater part of the time, since three o'clock in the morning; and they were also without water all night; for that which we had brought on deck was lost, and the casks stowed in the run (the part of the hold

under the cabin) no one had found time to get out. Towards morning, two of them gave over, and went into the forecastle and got drunk. The boy had been sent below something earlier, to prevent him from being washed overboard, for he was so fatigued (that is, so they said,) that whenever he was set to watch, he would invariably settle down on deck, and go to sleep. But the mate and one Peter Nelsen, a Dane, stood by bravely all night, especially the latter, a tall, rough-looking, silent man, who worked on,making no complaint himself, nor listening to any despondency in the others. Even to the mate, who at one time began to soften, and talk of his wife (he had been lately married) whom he thought he should never see again, he respectfully intimated, in his broken English, that he ought not to speak in that way, in the presence of the men. I suppose in fact that this Nelsen was the only man on board, who was of the right material for a time of great danger. He was always on the alert, never for a moment lost his self-possession. When he with the others was knocked down by the sea, he was seen to seize the rudder with one hand, and with the other, to reach out, and grasp the boy by the leg, who was just going overboard. In short, as Dr. Johnson says of Prince Hal, "he was great without effort," and did more to save the vessel, and apparently thought less of what he had done, than all the others on board.

In the morning the mate came below to find his shoes. He was a strong, willing, honest fellow, but simple-hearted and childlike. He had been much bruised when he went overboard, the bones of his face near the nose were fractured, his jaw wrenched round, and since receiving these injuries, he had been constantly on deck for fifteen hours, and as I was afterwards told, drank salt water in the night. He fretted about the cabin like a sick child. "If I could only find mine soos, then I could work." And as he stood on the transom looking for them, having come below merely for that purpose, he happened to lean against one of the berths. The sensation of rest was too sweet to be resisted. He balanced a moment on the side with a sort of grin, and then rolled over into it, and in two minutes was, to all appearances, in a deep sleep; from which he did not awake for more than forty-eight hours.

、

The captain now "turned out" and began to show somewhat more of interest in our temporal affairs, than he had done during the night. When he went on deck, he found the foremast sprung, the crosstrees split, and the rigging which supports the mast fast chafing away, and it was evident the latter could not stand much longer, unless the gale should abate. Peter, too, said that spite of all he could do, the water was still gaining in the hold. The fact was that the warm water of the Gulf-stream, in which we were drifting, taken in at the hatches and other holes on deck, in addition to leakage, was melting away the ice, of which our cargo consisted, very rapidly; and unless this melting could be stopped, we must soon loose our ballast, and be "water-logged," that is, the brig would fill and sink about even with the surface of the water, and then be rolled over and over, in the trough of the sea. The captain therefore secured the hatches, nailed leather over the holes on deck, and turned out the drunken fellows to relieve Peter in pumping. The sea was quite as high as ever; but the wind certainly had not increased, and though the captain did not say that he thought it had fallen, he remarked that he had been praying for it to do so, all night, thereby leaving me to refer as much of the abatement, if any should ensue, as I pleased, to his influence. It was plain, however, that either by prayer or rest, probably both, he had regained, in some degree, his proper tone of mind, and ability for exertion. But hope had scarcely yet begun to beam upon us. I recollect that morning overhauling my trunk to find, if possible, a dry clean shirt, and having the disagreeable thought, as I put it on, that I was putting on my own winding sheet, and thinking also, that it was folly to take the trouble. But our instincts are not to be frightened away by the near approach of death. At this time, too, I had perhaps, a sadder moment, than any before. It was occasioned by seeing in my trunk certain little matters which reminded me of friends. And once before, when that great sea struck us, which I have mentioned some pages back, a momentary thought, of my mother came over me, as I said to myself, "and so I am to be the first to go of the eight;" but in general, neither emotions of this kind, nor regret at leaving the world, nor remorse of conscience, nor thoughts of a future state, nor

yet prayer, except by suppressed ejaculation at some critical instant, occupied my mind, any considerable part of the time. I have no doubt that the most of the captain's praying was mechanical, that is partially so, just as were my mental recitations of poetry, and that both mainly served for occupation to the mind. The dreaded moment of dissolution, the last awful plunge was doubtless the main question with both; but this was qualified and softened down, and at times almost withdrawn from view, or the mind most kindly lured away from the contemplation of it, as I have before endeavored to explain. I tell you these things out of simple honesty, and if you will allow me to say so, as a philosopher, for my experience contradicts, in some degree, the preconceived ideas, which I had received, from whatever source, of the state of a man's mind, situated as we were on this occasion; and I see no good reason, why such expositions, when honestly made, should be, as I believe they are, considered unmanly.

At about one o'clock in the afternoon, it became evident the wind was somewhat on the decline. It still continued to blow a gale; but by comparing one hour with another, we could discover a sensible abatement. The men too, encouraged by Peter's example, all worked on vigorously, and a little before sunset reported that they were gaining on the water in the hold. The appalling sense of pressing and immediate danger was now gone, and I went to bed and slept soundly. In the morning, when I looked on deck, I found a signal of distress, that is, our ensign, with the union down, flying in the main rigging. The wind was blowing, not a gale, but strongly from the north-west; and the sea, though by no means so violent, still ran as high as the day previous. The men had at length got the brig free, but could only keep her so by constant pumping. The captain now called a consultation about leaving the vessel. He first came to me, but I declined giving an opinion, on account of inexperience. The mate was still asleep, and he now called the men aft, and made the proposition to them. They all seemed to look to Peter to answer for them, and Peter said at once, that we must not give up the brig. We had our rudder, and one mast sound, and sails and men enough left to get her in somewhere, unless there should come on another