1-16 
STORMY PETREL. 
the life-blood s^ T eep over the wilderness of waters, as if the very 
Furies were let slip, whirling along the driving snow, or thick 
showers of heavy rain, whose drops, mixed with spray, sleet, 
and hail, seem part of the squalls themselves; you hear—even 
if you are not there you hear—the loud shrieks of each gust 
of wind, and are aware of every coming blast. Whither is the 
stray bird to wing its way? Where is it to ‘flee away and be 
at rest?’ Where is it now gone? Where is it next to be seen? 
Change the scene, and in the low latitudes how impressive 
the stillness of the glorious main! ‘how awful is this place!’ 
What must it, too, be when there is none there on the bosom 
of the great deep to hear the sounds that are there to be heard, 
and see the sights that are there to be seen? Now the Petrel 
follows in the wake of some gallant ship sailing on in mistaken 
security, and on a sudden a white squall, typhoon, or tornado 
sweeps across her course, and in an instant she is upset, founders, 
and goes down among the gurgling waves, it may be not to 
the bottom, for there is in the lowest deep a lower and deeper 
still, and a fathomless abyss which the plummet has never 
sounded, whether it be that its depth is so profound, or whether 
that there is far down below a current so strong that nothing 
can sink through it, but must be whirled adown this true and 
potent ‘G-ulf Stream’ round and round the world. How is the 
ship borne along this ‘Race?’ Is she dashed to pieces by the 
terrific eddies of some ‘Maelstrom?’ and, if so, where, how, and 
when, if ever, will her shattered fragments re-appear? or does 
she, righted again, glide on once more, with masts standing and 
sails set, and perform, year after year, in some ‘under current,’ 
her ‘voyage round the world?’ Where is the ‘Return of the 
Admiral’ to be welcomed again? There stands the captain on 
his quarter-deck, and there are his crew ‘those for whom the 
place was kept at board and hearth so long,’ ‘loved and lost,’ 
but still expected perhaps by those at home, looking out in 
death with glazed eyes, now on the valleys, and now on the 
hills and mountains that bound the scene on either side, now 
on the ‘dark un fathomed caves’ that lie hid in the solitudes of 
the ocean bed, and now on the coral banks that rise far above 
to the surface. Now they overtake or now are passed by some 
other ‘Phantom Ship,’ a terror neither of them to the other; 
now overhead pass and re-pass the vessels of the naval nations 
of the world, the noble man-of-war, the stately merchantman, 
the fast and the slow, squadrons and convoys, the pursuers and 
the pursued, the ‘Homeward’ and the ‘Outward-bound:’ nothing 
