252 AN OCTOBER ABROAD. 



into one of those huge swells, and a solid blue wall 

 of water tons in weight comes over her bows and 

 floods her forward deck, she braces herself, every rod 

 and rivet and timber seems to lend its support, you 

 almost expect to see the wooden walls of your room 

 grow rigid with muscular contraction ; she trembles 

 from stem to stern, she recovers, she breaks the gripe 

 of her antagonist and rising up, shakes the sea from 

 her with a kind of gleeful wrath ; I hear the torrents 

 of water rush along the lower decks, and finding a 

 means of escape, pour back into the sea, glad to get 

 away on any terms, and I say, "Noble ship! you are 

 indeed a god ! " 



I wanted to see a first-class storm at sea, and per- 

 haps ought to be satisfied with the heavy blow or 

 hurricane we had when off -Sable Islands, but I con- 

 fess I was not, though, by the lying-to of the vessel 

 and the frequent soundings, it was evident there was 

 danger about. A dense fog uprose, which did not 

 drift like a land fog, but was as immovable as iron ; 

 it was like a spell, a misty enchantment, and out of 

 this fog came the wind, a steady, booming blast, that 

 smote the ship over on her side and held her there 

 and howled in the rigging like a chorus of fiends. 

 The waves did not know which way to flee ; they 

 were heaped up and then scattered in a twinkling. 

 I thought of the terrible line of one of our poets : 



" The spasm of the sky and the shatter of the sea." 

 The sea looked wrinkled and old, and oh, so pitiless ! 

 I had stood long before Turner's " Shipwreck " in the 



