LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
607 
master mind that could grapple with the storm, and expose a 
hardened front to its overwhelming power, was here absent; 
the spirit of self was predominant, absorbing in itself those 
great and ennobling feelings, which inspire the gallant heart to 
be the first in the race of danger, to participate in every risk, 
and to be the last to give himself up to the mean and sickening 
influence of despair. The seaman, as he kept his midnight watch, 
pacing the lonely deck, the silence of desolation around him 
broken only at intervals by the distant crash of the masses 
of ice coming into collision with each other—to him, in his soli¬ 
tary moments, came the thought, that ere a few months more were 
over his head, the noble structure, which had been his habitation 
for the three preceding years, would be forsaken, and gradually 
fall to pieces like a wreck in a land unknown. The savage of 
the country perhaps would come and find the cabins desolate ; 
the dreaded beings, who had ruled over them as some mighty 
spirits to whom all created life appeared to be subject, had, like 
the nocturnal coruscastions of their gloomy clime, vanished on a 
sudden, as if some power mightier than themselves had swept 
them from the earth, in vengeance of their audacity and pride. 
It has been said, that an English sailor is not a thinking 
being, that his ideas carry him not higher than his top-gallant 
yard; nor that his thoughts extend beyond the quarter, to 
which his magnet points. It is perhaps well for him, that 
much truth lies in the observation , but we know, that there 
were some on board the Victory, who looked forward to the 
moment of her abandonment, with regret and grief, as if they 
w r ere to be called upon to bid farewell to a dear and valued 
friend. A sailor becomes in time, as attached to his ship, as a 
landsman to his house—it has been his home—his place of 
shelter—the scene perhaps of many a jovial hour, and the place 
where he has formed bis schemes of happiness, when the sails 
were to be furled on the shores of his native land. It is a proud 
moment of a sailor’s life, when, after having weathered his hun¬ 
dred storms, he drops his anchor in the waters of his fatherland ; 
yet, on the other hand, in the moment of her abandonment on 
a foreign shore, although, with his apparent characteristic in„ 
