FRESH AND SALT. 197 



as the " first-class passenger" soon makes a disagreeable 

 discovery. Deeming himself a very good sailor, he has 

 gone to some trouble to enter upon this expedition ; 

 solely in the expectation, however, of being perpetually 

 under sail. Movement is life. Movement on the sea, 

 so long as it is decidedly progressive, is life in a not un- 

 pleasant form. Now I hear the order given to take in sail, 

 and am informed that for the next twelve or eighteen 

 hours the Seabird will drift with the flood — perhaps a dozen 

 miles north and then a dozen miles back again ; but always 

 and entirely at the mercy of the waves. 



Verily circumstances alter cases. The billows which, 

 while we were careering seawards with a stiff breeze on the 

 beam, dashed over the bows, were welcome and delicious to 

 the Seabird ; and to the passenger who, having nothing 

 else to do, was able to enjoy the motion. To be tossed like 

 a balk of timber on the said billows, and yet be like the 

 caged squirrel whose perpetual wanderings never raise him 

 an inch higher, is a vastly different thing. Yet this is 

 the prospect ; and I find out, when too late, that the 

 trawler, and not the herring boat, should have been the 

 object of my wooing. However, there is no help for it; 

 cut here there is no shore boat to hail. 



The small sails are taken in, and the topmast struck. 

 The mainsail follows, and, as if to remove all hope, the 

 mainmast is lowered backwards, as the river steamers lower 

 their funnels when passing under a bridge. The spar drops 

 into a crutch upheld by a stout piece of timber about twelve 

 feet long, fitted into the deck, somewhere about the centre 

 of the vessel. Brought for the moment broadside to the 

 waves, the Seabird wallows and rolls furiously and helplessly, 



