92 THE CALL OF THE SEA 



at the mercy of the tempest. At length the mast 

 of one of them gave way, and tumbled overboard 

 with a hideous crash ! Nor was the prospect in 

 our own ship much more agreeable : a number of 

 officers and sailors ran backward and forward with 

 distraction in their looks, halloaing to one another, 

 and undetermined what they should attend to first. 

 Some clung to the yards, endeavouring to unbend 

 the sails that were split into a thousand pieces 

 flapping in the wind ; others tried to furl those 

 which were yet whole, while the masts, at every 

 pitch, bent and quivered like twigs, as if they 

 would have shivered into innumerable splinters ! 



Tobias Sinollett. 



The Slave Ship -oy <:i^ -<;> 



(From Modern Painters) 



T)UT I think the noblest sea that Turner has ever 

 painted, and, if so, the noblest certainly ever 

 painted by man, is that of the Slave Ship, the chief 

 Academy picture of the Exhibition of 1840. It is a 

 sunset on the Atlantic, after prolonged storm ; but 

 the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and stream- 

 ing rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose 

 themselves in the hollow of the night. The whole 

 surface of the sea included in the picture is divided 

 into two ridges of enormous swell, not high, nor 

 local, but a low broad heaving of the whole ocean, 



