TESTING THE TRITON. 161 
persistently attempt to take possession of our temporary “house 
and home.” William, also from one of the outer islands, obeyed 
orders, and made himself generally useful. 
We were soon out upon the broad Atlantic, and Sampson, like 
the rider of a winning horse at a race, experienced a gratification 
he could not entirely conceal, as, with the gracefulness and seem- 
ing speed of a sea gull, his yacht pluckily met and mounted the 
high rolling billows, which we could not but remember had, in 
their angry moods, strewn with wrecks the neighboring shores. 
A portion of one of those wrecks was in sight, being all that re- 
mains of a blockade runner, whose captain took his steamer to 
the left instead of the right of Nassau lighthouse. Some claim 
the officers were all drunk; others say, ‘‘it was a put up job;” 
but all the boatmen united in affirming, that, as a consequence, 
“‘ boots and shoes were plenty on Hog Island ”—those articles 
having constituted a part of her cargo. Certain it is, that hav- 
ing sailed out of Nassau harbor one afternoon, the vessel returned 
in the evening of the same day, and wasbeached. Sampson said, 
with an exultant chuckle, after alluding to the cargo scattered 
along the shore, that ‘‘der Cap’n mistake Nassau light for der 
‘Hole in der Wall,’ ” (a well known light upon Abaco, nearly six- 
teen miles distant.) 
The larger waves moved towards us in stately grandeur, in a 
regular order of succession, as if marshaled and marching over 
the bosom of the ocean under the guidance and direction of some 
invisible god of the seas. After every nine smaller waves had 
passed. by, and under us, the long liquid platoon was marked 
and bounded by a billow whose approach was watched with much 
interest, and with an exhilarating but peculiar pleasure, as it 
would often not only wash our forecastle and submerge our gun-| 
nels, but drench us from head to foot, and make lively work for’ 
William and his sponges. The pure ocean air, pleasantly cool 
