BARK AND BITTER FEELIXO. 
377 
made than I knew that the “old John” was in another ol 
her disagreeahly-tiglit places; and, when I heard the rush- 
ing tide leaping up our sides in its mad fury, and reflected 
that wc had to steam against that tide before we could 
round those black and towering piles of basaltic rock 
which blocked our path with certain death, heart for 
a moment contracted with spasmodic horror; and, when it 
again swelled almost to bursting, it was with curses deep 
and bitter against those in auihoriiyy whose stupid igno- 
rance or criminal carelessness had risked the safety of so 
many lives by detailing such a vessel for the hazardous 
undertaking of a surveying voyage around the world. 
“If there’s any speed in her, it’ll have to come out 
now, or it’s all day with us,” said a voice at my elbow. 
I turned with a look of gloomy inquiry to see the 
speaker ; for the voice, tliough a familiar one, was 
so strangely modulated hy emotion as to he scarcely 
recognisable. It was the captain, who, having nothing 
more to discover from aloft, had returned to the deck, — 
cool, calm, collected, and yet very pale; and liis voice, 
though thus straugel}^ modulated by emotion, was firm 
and bell-like, and his eye bright, partially with moisture, 
hut more than partially Avith the light of tliat fire whicli 
burns only in the brave man’s eye when dangers crowd 
around him, or in the eagle’s glance when it meets the 
rays of the mid-day sun. 
“Yes,” he continued, in a voice whose forced cheerful- 
ness grated harshly on the nervous ear; “the ‘old John’ 
must indeed ‘scratch gravel’ now, or Ave are lost at last 
Tell Lawton to fire up : let us have all the steam he can. 
If the boilers Avou’t bear it they must burst Even noAv we 
