232 WINTER SUNSHINE 



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 tor- 

 rents of water rush along the lower decks, and, find- 

 ing 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 Island, 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 National Gallery in London, and this sea re- 

 called his, and I appreciated more than ever the 

 artist's great powers. 



These storms, it appears, are rotary in their wild 

 dance and promenade up and down the seas. "Look 

 the wind squarely in the teeth," said an ex-sea- 



