THE CRUISE OP THE BETSEY ; OR, 



thirty years' standing, whose station at the bottom of the 

 cabin stairs enabled him to see how fast the water was gain- 

 ing on the Betsey, but not how the Betsey was gaining on 

 the land, was by no means the least anxious among us. 

 Twenty years previous he had seen a vessel go down in ex- 

 actly similar circumstances, and in nearly the same place ; and 

 the reminiscence, in the circumstances, seemed rather an un- 

 comfortable one. It had been a bad evening, he said, and 

 the vessel he sailed in, and a sloop, her companion, were press- 

 ing hard to gain the land. The sloop had sprung a leak, and 

 was straining, as if for life and death, under a press of can- 

 vass. He saw her outsail the vessel to which he belonged, 

 but, when a few bow-shots a-head, she gave a sudden lurch, 

 and disappeared from the surface instantaneously, as a va- 

 nishing spectre, and neither sloop nor crew were ever more 

 heard of. 



There are, I am convinced, few deaths less painful than 

 some of those untimely and violent ones at which we are most 

 disposed to shudder. We wrought so hard at pail and pump, 

 the occasion, too, was one of so much excitement, and tended 

 so thoroughly to awaken our energies, that I was conscious, 

 during the whole time, of an exhilaration of spirits rather 

 pleasurable than otherwise. My fancy was active, and active, 

 strange as the fact may seem, chiefly with ludicrous objects. 

 Sailors tell regarding the flying Dutchman, that he was a 

 hard-headed captain of Amsterdam, who, in a bad night and 

 head wind, when all the other vessels of his fleet were falling 

 back on the port they had recently quitted, obstinately swore 

 that, rather than follow their example, he would keep beat- 

 ing about till the day of judgment. And the Dutch cap- 

 tain, says the story, was just taken at his word, and is beat- 

 ing about still. When matters were at the worst with us, 

 we got under the lee of the point of Sleat. The promontory 

 interposed between us and the roll of the sea ; the wind gra- 



