196 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



cult to preserve the plates and dishes from destruction. 

 Our thinned company hinted that the rolling had other 

 consequences. It was very wild when we went to bed. 

 I slumbered and slept, but after some time was rendered 

 anxiously conscious that my body had become a kind 

 of projectile, with the ship's side for a target. I gripped 

 the edge of my berth to save myself from being thrown 

 out. Outside, I could hear somebody say that he had 

 been thrown from his berth, and sent spinning to the 

 other side of the saloon. The screw laboured violently 

 amid the lurching ; it incessantly quitted the water, and, 

 twirling in the air, rattled against its bearings, causing 

 the ship to shudder from stem to stern. At times the 

 waves struck us, not with the soft impact which might 

 be expected from a liquid, but with the sudden solid 

 shock of battering-rams. ' No man knows the force of 

 water,' said one of the officers, ' until he has experienced 

 a storm at sea.' These blows followed each other at 

 quicker intervals, the screw rattling after each of them, 

 until, finally, the delivery of a heavier stroke than 

 ordinary seemed to reduce the saloon to chaos. Furni- 

 ture crashed, glasses rang, and alarmed enquiries 

 immediately followed. Amid the noises I heard one 

 note of forced laughter ; it sounded very ghastly. Men 

 tramped through the saloon, and busy voices were heard 

 aft, as if something there had gone wrong. 



I rose, and not without difficulty got into my 

 clothes. In the after-cabin, under the superintendence 

 of the able and energetic navigating lieutenant, Mr. 

 Brown, a group of blue-jackets were working at the 

 tiller-ropes. These had become loose, and the helm 

 refused to answer the wheel. High moral lessons 

 might be gained on shipboard, by observing what stead- 

 fast adherence to an object can accomplish, and what 

 large effects are heaped up by the addition of infinitesi- 



