398 LOW SPIRITS. 



the veritable Montank Point and light-house. This 

 was cheering; but no pilot was to be seen, and 

 our only resort was to shorten sail, heave the ship 

 to, and hang on as closely as possible to the wind- 

 ward, so as to have no difficulty in beating up at 

 the approach of daylight. To this end we clewed 

 up and furled our light sails, reefed and furled the 

 courses, clewed down and close-reefed the topsails — 

 and bitter work we had of it. The weather, although 

 not intensely cold to one accustomed to it, to our 

 tropical sensibilities was frigid; and as, during the 

 da}', we had been enveloped by fog, our canvas was 

 damp and heavy, and not to be handled in a moment; 

 so that it was a task of time, patience, exposure, and 

 danger, to reduce the old ship's canvas to a spread 

 commensurate to the violence of the gale which now 

 blew from west-north-west. In reviewing my whole 

 stock of sea experience, comprising over three years 

 of actual life upon the broad bosoms of four out of 

 the five oceans of the globe, I can call to memory no 

 time at which I felt more depressed than during the 

 continuance of this night; not so much from the heavi- 

 iness of the gale, for I had weathered scores that were 

 much heavier ; not from the short, breaking, comb- 

 ing sea, which, from being on soundings and in 

 shallow water, made it but a plaything in tlie heavy 

 gust, and rendered it trebly unpleasant, breaking 

 upon and against the ship, keeping her continually 

 wet and uncomfortable ; but this too was a matter of 

 course to me — Iliad had my jacket wet a hundred, 

 ay, a thousand times, with the salted spray of old 

 ocean ; nor was it from a sense of danger from any 

 or all of these combinations; but the wind gradually, 

 yet steadily, hauling to the northward, occasioned a 



