ROOST. 
335 
a stout heart beats beneath the silk tartan! The 
result covered that brilliant garment with glory and 
salt water. To tack was impossible, we could only 
wear,—and to wear in such a sea was no very pleasant 
operation. But the little ship seemed to know what 
she was about, as well as any of us: up went the helm, 
round came the schooner into the trough of the sea,— 
high over her quarter toppled an enormous sea—built 
up of I know not how many tons of water—and hung 
over the deck;—by some unaccountable wriggle—an 
instant ere it thundered down—she had twisted her 
stern on one side, and the wave passed underneath. In 
another minute her head was to the sea, the mainsail 
was eased over, and all danger was past. 
What was now to be done? That the land we 
had seen was the coast of Norway—I could not believe. 
Wrong as our dead reckoning evidently was, it could 
not be so wrong as that. Yet only one other suppo¬ 
sition was possible, viz. that we had not come so far 
south as we imagined, and that we had stumbled upon 
Boost—a little rocky island that lies about twenty miles 
to the southward of the Loffoden Islands. Whether 
this conjecture was correct or not, did not much matter; 
