THE DELIGHTS OP THE "BEEP." 565 



* Our live lumber (as the sailors call passengers and poultry) was 

 numerous. A young Israelite, two old Scotch civilians, a newly- 

 married clergyman with his young and delicate wife, together with a 

 thick-headed booby Creole,, and a bigotted Catholic, formed the prin- 

 cipal characters of the cabin. The Jew was too much occupied with 

 prayers and sickness to attend to any other worldly concerns even 

 a pig-stye, with its abhorred tenant for a companion, would doubtless 

 have been more agreeable to him at this moment, than his berth. 

 The cunning old Scotchmen had been the voyage before, so that 

 while their fellow-passengers were as yet strange, sick and new, 

 they busied themselves in securing the corners of the cabin for their 

 desks, or appropriating to their use sundry convenient pegs for their 

 hats, caps, and cloaks, in short, to be good and true men fra' the 

 land o' cakes, they secured all they could secure for themselves. 

 The married couple were too ill to help each other ; the lady's eyes 

 spoke love and fear, and her husband's were as dull as a bishop's 

 after his feed. The booby Creole, who had been in England for his 

 education, was returning with all the airs and impudence he could 

 export, and banished his nausea by admiring with all due solemnity 

 his legs and boots. While busy scenes were acting in the cabin, and 

 the steward was in high request supplying doses of brandy, various 

 domestic utensils, holding the heads, in short, while the steward 

 was as busy as a bee in a tar-bucket, acting as wet-nurse to the full- 

 grown babies, there was a scene of bustle among the crew. The 

 hoi sting-in of the boats which were to be launched in other climes, 

 the unbending and stowing away of the cables and lashing of the 

 anchors, kept all hands in active employment ; while the watchful 

 captain, with his speaking-trumpet, strode the quarter-deck, and 

 tempered his canvas to the gale. 



Night crept on, our native hills became lost in the mist and spray 

 of the angry waves. The winds began to whistle through the rigging, 

 and reefs were set in the topsails. The ship rolled her huge mass 

 among the surges, as the captain paced the deck, now looking 

 anxiously at the binnacle, then at the direction of the wind; his 

 manner appeared to me foreboding, as he said, every now and then, 

 " keep her the course'' f ' keep her well out." As he gazed anxiously 

 to windward, methought it was ominous of evil. 



I retired to my berth with a weary heart. The hasty and unex- 

 pected farewell I had uttered in the morning weighed heavily on me. 

 The anxious hours of my lonely wife in a strange town, her last gaze 

 upon me, and her last look upon our sails as we sunk in the horizon, 

 in short, a host of feelings worked upon me, till I became heart- 

 sore. The sighs and groans of my fellow-passengers in the dead of 

 the night, when all was darkness, together with the dismal creaking 

 of the vessel as she rolled heavily about, added no comfort to my 

 fevered brain. At last a delicious state of fitful sleep came over me. 

 I dreamt and waked in the same minute. Thoughts came and went 

 ere my mind could fix or dwell on any. Phantoms danced before me. 

 Deep red streams shot in long and rapid lines. Showers of light, 

 then darkness, and brilliant beams again. In this state of half-un- 

 consciousness, I was aroused by a sudden and tumultuous sound of 



