144 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



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, t 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. 

 Furniture 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 steadfast adherence to 

 an' object can accomplish, and what large effects are 

 heaped up by the addition of infinitesimals. The tiller- 

 rope, as the blue-jackets strained in concert, seemed 

 hardly to move; still it did move a little, until finally, 



