confusion worse confounded in evidence everywhere,--perhaps it did
break, that overwrought heart of mine and has been a patched thing ever
since.

We were a miserable lot that night, pitched to and fro and rolled from
side to side as if we were so much baggage. And there was a special
horror in the darkness, as well as in the wind that hissed through the
rigging, and in the waves that rushed past us, sheeted with foam that
faded ghostlike as we watched it,--faded ghostlike, leaving the
blackness of darkness to enfold us and swallow us up.

Day after day for a dozen days we ploughed that restless sea. There were
days into which the sun shone not; when everybody and everything was
sticky with salty distillations; when half the passengers were sea-sick
and the other half sick of the sea. The decks were slimy, the cabins
stuffy and foul. The hours hung heavily, and the horizon line closed in
about us a gray wall of mist.

Then I used to bury myself in my books and try to forget the world, now
lost to sight, and, as I sometimes feared, never to be found again. I
had brought my private library with me; it was complete in two volumes.
There was "Rollo Crossing the Atlantic," by dear old Jacob Abbot; and
this book of juvenile travel and adventure I read on the spot, as it
were,--read it carefully, critically; flattering myself that I was a lad
of experience, capable of detecting any nautical error which Jacob, one
of the most prolific authors of his day, might perchance have made. The
other volume was a pocket copy of "Robinson Crusoe," upon the fly-leaf
of which was scrawled, in an untutored hand, "Charley from
Freddy,"--this Freddy was my juvenile chum. I still have that little
treasure, with its inscription undimmed by time.