pumps
could scarcely keep the water out. The vessel rolled until the deck could be seen by the monsters at the bottom of watery gulches, and as she went down on her beam ends, seamen clung to the rigging for their lives.
Out upon the brine was one of the grandest sights I ever beheld. Gradually and steadily the wind had increased until the uplifted sea, in wrath long nursed for worthy occasions, shook itself in its mighty unrest ; then rushing upon us with a howl, the storm culminated in a frenzy of fury. Looking away toward the west under the sullen sky and swiftly flying clouds, looking quickly while the ship momen- tarilv balanced herself on some foaminsf crest hiixh in air, looking far away, as far as the eye could reach, to where the low scowdincr heavens and ocean met, where air and water whipped themselves together and sea and sky were one, and I saw as from some high sierra a succession of rolling ridges, glassy gulches, and splashing cliffs. Hitherward they came, born, perhaps, hundreds of miles away, with thousands rushing after them, roaring loud-mouthed and wrath- ful as if to overwhelm us. The little ship on which I stood was no more to them than a buzzing fly to a whirlwind. Then we plunged headlong down into the deep smooth-bottomed canon, and looking upward, beheld on either side a writhing molten mountain, with trembling dome and glistening pin- nacle, with serried summit cream-crested and fes- tooned, and almost perpendicular black-green walls streaked with stringy foam, while the yet more impa- tient avalanche leaped the abyss, or fell with a crash upon the laboring ship below. Once more uplifted, I loc^ked again upon the battle of the wind and waves — tall waves, beautiful in their ever varying colors, now rising into mountains, now melting into plains, then turning, surge meeting surge in foaming coun- terdance; and now comes the wind, chasing the whist- ling brine swifter than Diana's dart, and seiz
