154 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



ened to a gale, and at dinner it was difficult 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. Out- 

 side, 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 labored 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. 

 *'!N'o man knows the force of water," said one of the offi- 

 cers, ''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 sa- 

 loon to chaos. Furniture crashed, glasses rang, and 

 alarmed inquiries 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 



