fearful height and then bursting into sheets of foam; every drop
containing some luminous animalcula sparkling with vivid, yet delicate
lustre? We were going with headlong speed before the wind, and I hung
right over the track of the rudder, a wild, mad eddy of silver foam,
intermingled with fire. There was something in the scene that far
overpassed all my extravagant imaginings of the terribly sublime. The
hurry, the fierceness, the riot of those unfettered waters, the wild
flash of their wondrous lights, the funereal blackness of the
overhanging clouds, and the deep, desperate plunge of our gallant ship,
as she seemed to rend her way through an opposing chaos--it was perfect
delirium; and no doubt I should have appeared in keeping with the rest
to any external observer, for I was stretching out at the window, the
combs had fallen from my hair, which streamed as wildly as the rent
sails; and I was frequently deluged by some bursting wave, as the dip of
the vessel brought me down almost to the surface. The peril of an open
window was startling to those on deck, and the captain, hearing that I
refused to relinquish my post, sent the mate to put up the dead-lights;
so I sat down on the floor, buried my face in my hands, and strove to
realize the magnificence thus rent from my sight.

Yes, God's works in the great deep are indeed wonders. Nothing landward
can possibly approach them: in the rudest tempest the ground remains
firm, and you feel that you are a spectator; but at sea you are a part
of the storm. The plank whereon you stand refuses to support you, ever
shifting its inclination; while the whole of your frail tenement is now
borne aloft, now dashed into the liquid furrow beneath, now struck back
by a head-sea with a shock that makes every timber quiver, now flung on
one side as if about to reverse itself in the bosom of the deep. No
doubt the sense of personal danger, the death-pang already anticipated,
the dark abyss that yawns before the sinner, and the heaven opening on a