340 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



the snow beat like drifting sand into my eyes, and 

 the ship, the ship was gone, and there was I left to 

 struggle, and buffet, and gasp, and sink, and perish, 

 alone, unseen, and unpitied by man, and as I thought, 

 too, by the everlasting God. I tried to penetrate the 

 surrounding darkness with rny glaring eyes that felt 

 leaping from their sockets, and saw, as if by miracu- 

 lous power, to a great distance through the night, 

 but no ship, nothing but white-crested waves, and 

 the dismal noise of thunder. I shouted, shrieked, 

 and yelled, that I might be heard by the crew, till 

 my voice was gone, and that too when I knew that 

 there were none to hear me. At last I became 

 utterly speechless, and when I tried to call aloud 

 there was nothing but a silent gasp and convulsion, 

 while the waves came upon me like stunning blows, 

 reiterated and reiterated, and drove me along like a 

 log of wood or a dead animal. 



Once I muttered to myself, " This is a dream, and 

 I shall awake." I had often before dreamt of being 

 drowned, and this idea of its being a dream so pressed 

 upon me, that I vainly strove to shriek out, that the 

 noise might awaken me. But oh ! the transition, 

 from this momentary and wild hope of its being all a 

 dreadful dream, into the conviction of its reality ! 

 That indeed was something more hideous than a 

 fanatic's thought of hell. All at once I felt my in- 

 most soul throttled, strangled, and stifled, by an in- 

 supportable fear of death. That death, which to my 



