10 
SCENES IN INDIA. 
that my cot had struck against the roof of the cabin, 
where it remained motionless ; it no longer swung. 
For the instant I fancied the vessel was in the act 
of sinking — I knew not what to think. When my 
senses had somewhat recovered from the shock and 
terrible impression of my dream, I sprang from the cot 
upon the cabin- floor. I heard a dreadful uproar upon 
deck, and with a half-frantic desperation threw my- 
self into the cuddy. I had no other dress on than 
that in which I had retired to my cot for the night. 
The noise upon deck increased, and my anxiety by 
this time amounted to positive torment. I reached 
the cuddy door, and opened it with a heart full of 
wild and tumultuous apprehensions. I had scarcely 
done this, when a gigantic billow poured over the bow 
of the ship, hissing and sparkling in the impeded 
moonlight, and I stood upon the quarter-deck up to 
my shoulders in water. I clung for an instant to the 
ladder of the poop, which, as soon as I could recover 
myself, I ascended. Here I witnessed a scene which 
I shall never forget to the latest moment of my exist- 
ence. When memory brings the picture to my mind, 
with the long shadows of years between it and the 
reality, it shakes me even now. I never carry my 
thoughts back to this fearful night that the minutest 
circumstance of the scene does not recur to my recol- 
lection with the most awful distinctness : it is one of 
those events only to be wiped from the records of 
memory in that grave “ where all things are forgot- 
ten.” 
I looked around me upon a wide world of waters, 
which were raging with fearful commotion. The 
