F. T. BULLEN 89 



her sails tearing her along up the watery acclivity 

 as if they would drag the spars out of her. Now 

 she rushes on the curl of the wave, with her bows 

 and a third of her keel hove out into the air, as if 

 she were going to shoot across like a flying-fish 

 into the swelling bosom of the next sea. Once 

 more she is hove on her beam-ends and hid by an 

 intervening billow. Ha ! what a blinding flash, as 

 the blue forked lightning glances from sky to sea 

 right over where I saw her last ! Hark ! the split- 

 ting crash and stunning reverberations of the 

 shaking thunder, rolling through the empyrean 

 loud as an archangel's voice, until earth and air 

 tremble again. She rights— she rights ! There ! 

 the narrow shred of white canvas gleams again 

 through the mist in the very fiercest of the squall 

 — yes, there / No ! God of my fathers ! 



IT IS BUT A BREAKING WAVE I 



Michael Scott, 



Responsibility of the Helmsman <:i^ 



(From The Cruise of the ''Cachalot'') 



VT'OU are running before the wind and waves, 

 sometimes deep in the valley between two 

 liquid mountains, sometimes high on the rolling 

 ridge of one. You watch anxiously the speed of 

 the sea, trying to decide whether it or you are 



