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welcome wind swells into a lusty gale, and we skim along at a pace that is something to feel, our keel ploughs through the surging waves, and the sea grows heavy with tumbling waves. Fast as we go the hoarse wind drives the rushing water to madness, and we fly before the wild confusion that hurries up from the north. About our bows, the white crests of foam leap up like hounds at the throat of a hard pressed deer. At our stern the great billows tumble in their haste to engulf us, in their frenzied desire to swamp us altogether. Higher and higher the wild waves rise around us--the schooner is built for such a struggle. Her great breadth of beam abaft helps her to rise to the sea, and she spins along with the ease of a floating sea-bird; such a wind is the delight of the seaman, secure in the staunchness of his ship. He watches every motion of his craft as she glides through the troubled waters. No sea-sickness now interferes with the true enjoyment of the crew they have long since forgotten the experience they had of the rough seas to the north of Lerwick on our outward course, and they go about their various occupations with unmistakable enjoyment. On the 21st September we sighted the Shetlands once more; for three days we had been unable to take the necessary sights for finding our position, and we were

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naturally not quite certain of our whereabouts; but our distance run was carefully taken, and, true to our reckoning, we sighted the land a little to windward. We could now watch the terrible sea driving with stupendous force against the rocks, and we haul to the wind confident in the prowess of our little schooner. She is one of the best sea boats we have ever sailed in. There are few vessels afloat that would venture to weather that storm-tossed shore under the circumstances-a lee shore, a sea running, and a whole gale blowing at the time. It was an awfully grand spectacle, and we were right glad when every difficulty of approaching the harbour was at length overcome, and we once more dropped anchor in Lerwick Harbour. There, that portion of the crew whose services we had secured from the Shetlands left us, and we watched, with profound interest, the hearty welcome, if the term can convey with it the meaning it ought to serve, of their glad wives and children at the return of the long absent relatives to their homes. On Monday we again put out into the gale, which had abated nothing of its fury during our short pause, and once more under its driving influence we sped along the pitching sea. Here it was we fell in with many vessels all hove to, none daring to run with us. We see the great advantage of the broad stern of the

schooner over the narrow and finer lines of the other craft about us. We now resolve to run for Peterhead; but the bar harbour, dry at low water, is surmounted by a boiling and seething surf; no vessel durst venture there in weather such as this, and this, be it remembered, is the condition of the harbours along our eastern coast from Leith to the Humber, offering no refuge whatever for a belaboured craft like ours, running from the north.

Here it was we saw a large water-spout-one of those remarkable phenomena seen at rare intervals along the coast of England; not one of those steady columns of water that rise like a pillar out of calm still water, such as we have seen in the tropical seashissing and foaming after the approved fashion, twisting round and round in a long spiral, growing thinner and thinner, until they disappear altogether, to reappear, perhaps, again at a little distance, in company with some ten or twelve other water-spouts, carrying, each of them, an enormous volume of water into the thin, warm air; but this, a great thick cloud, low down over the surface of the sea, dark and threatening-looking, as it travelled, at a great pace, over the waves, and was only linked with the ocean, from which it sprung by a slender neck, as it swept along before the storm, itself threatening, in turn, with destruction

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