THE BELGIAN FARMER 371 
across this rail-guarded plank, and when the next 
flash came I was sitting at the feet of the look- 
out man with the two silver dollars in my out- 
stretched hand. He took the money, and let me 
crawl forward between the anchors and the high 
bulwark of the bows. 
The sensations which this position gave me 
were strange beyond description. Darkness was 
thick around me; at one moment I was carried 
upward until I felt that I should be lost in the 
black sky, and the next moment the downward 
motion was so terrible that the blacker water at 
the bottom of the sea seemed near. I cannot 
say that I enjoyed it, but I could not give 
it up. 
When the great bow rose, I stood up, and, 
looking over the bulwark, tried to see either sky 
or water, but tried in vain, save when the light- 
ning revealed them both. When the bow fell, I 
crouched under the bulwark and let the sea comb 
over me. How long I remained at this weird 
post, I do not know; but I was driven from it 
in such terror as I hope never to feel again. 
An unusually large wave carried me nearer the 
sky than I liked to be, and just as the sharp bow 
of the great iron ship was balancing on its crest 
for the desperate plunge, a glare of lightning 
made sky and sea like a sheet of flame and 
eurdled the blood in my veins. In the trough 
of the sea, under the very foot of the immense 
steamship, lay a delicate pleasure-boat, with its 
