be beneath the ocean heaving up these great masses of vol iv no i voyage to water for our special destruction and then again when i remembered looking off to sea the waves seemed an pack of great giant hell hounds on by the winds bounding and howling on towards us with the bitter fixed tearing us in pieces this was one of my disagreeable thoughts as sat up in the cabin and there was another thing troubled me i must confess at the risk of losing your good opinion that the praying of the captain afforded me anything but con it looked so like giving up the ship and was such a plain intimation that all hope of being saved by earthly aid was at an end that i could not but feel discouraged by it like on his return from russia to compare small things to large he seemed to have a dread of hearing details and apparently wished to abstract his mind from what was going on around him and taking it for granted that we should be all lost set very about what he considered the necessary process for saving his own soul i do not intend to sneer at him for praying to pray in times of great danger is as as to breathe at such times all men whether christians or pray instinctively � though for the most part by and in silence i only mean to say that the master of a vessel should be the last man aboard to show by any change of manner a falling off in confidence but our captain was an old man of a and though not cowardly was weighed down by a perfect mare of superstition and i found afterwards had a that this would be his last voyage at about ten or eleven o clock at night one of the men came to the and asked for bread they had had nothing to eat all day i about below for our lamps were lost till i found some bread and having handed it up before the was closed took a look out on deck the moon at that moment for it was for the most part a dry storm was shining full and clear the same sea was raging and the same wind roaring just as they were seven hours previous and our forlorn shattered was still it out with them alone upon the ocean i do remember it now for a scene of awful beauty and but so far as i recollect i only felt at the time that it was awful i have heard of men who could forget imminent danger in voyage to their admiration of the sublime and of a painter who lashed himself to the mast that he might draw the sea in a terrible storm i take this to be chiefly at any rate for myself i was sick and weak it was cold � my clothes were wet i was and doubled up with � the fear of death was pressing heavily upon me and i confess the artist feeling did not so prevail over the man i went below and for the purpose of getting warm for sleep was out of the question i took to my berth i first piled into it all the wet clothes i could find for we had no other and then tried to pull off my coat but it was so wet and the rolled so much that after it down the back and tearing one sleeve nearly out i gave it up and got in with all my clothes on between the straw bed and the both of which were thoroughly and in less than an hour i found myself in a sort of steam bath of very comfortable temperature about every quarter of an during the night heard the man on the watch give a cry of warning to those at the followed by the tumbling of a heavy sea on deck and then a of the vessel which it took all my holding on to keep from throwing me out of my berth then the water streamed down through the to increase the quantity in the hold bearing with it or some matter which left ghastly streaks of light on the � or rather looked like pale liquid fire down the bulk head our great danger was that in on account of these heavy seas the would throw her out or as the mate afterwards expressed it shake the sticks out of herself and was all night to hear them fall every time we a sea my mind however was not exclusively occupied by these fearful details nor as i have remarked before by the dreaded catastrophe at times some scrap or other such as backward and forward half her length with a short uneasy motion would suddenly come into my head and in a moment i was striving like a boy at school to the succeeding lines that of containing et es joseph the french painter of sea scenes voyage to july of which i could remember at first only this one line haunted me thus for a long time my memory seemed to take it up on her own account with the obstinate determination to conquer it and was succeeding better than i am able to do at this moment when another great sea and a of the put it to flight at another time i myself very busy with the ballad of which the following is a three merry men and three merry men and three merry men are we i on the sea and thou on the land and jack on the gallows tree it soon struck me was very ridiculous and to be thinking of old situated as i was but a moment after there it was again through my mind to a merry tune i on the sea and thou on the 