THE BELGIAN FARMER 371 



across this rail-guarded plank, arid when the next 

 flash came I was sitting at the feet of the look- 

 out man with the two silver dollars in my out- 

 stretched hand. He took the money, and let me 

 crawl forward between the anchors and the high 

 bulwark of the bows. 



The sensations which this position gave me 

 were strange beyond description. Darkness was 

 thick around me ; at one moment I was carried 

 upward until I felt that I should be lost in the 

 black sky, and the next moment the downward 

 motion was so terrible that the blacker water at 

 the bottom of the sea seemed near. I cannot 

 say that I enjoyed it, but I could not give 

 it up. 



When the great bow rose, I stood up, and, 

 looking over the bulwark, tried to see either sky 

 or water, but tried in vain, save when the light- 

 ning revealed them both. When the bow fell, I 

 crouched under the bulwark and let the sea comb 

 over me. How long I remained at this weird 

 post, I do not know ; but I was driven from it 

 in such terror as I hope never to feel again. 



An unusually large wave carried me nearer the 

 sky than I liked to be, and just as the sharp bow 

 of the great iron ship was balancing on its crest 

 for the desperate plunge, a glare of lightning 

 made sky and sea like a sheet of flame and 

 curdled the blood in my veins. In the trough 

 of the sea, under the very foot of the immense 

 steamship, lay a delicate pleasure-boat, with its 



