f ever you go to England, you can see them if you want to.

A HARD SWIM.

BY DAVID KER.

There are few things more delightful than to be at sea on a fine summer
day, with a bright blue sky above and a bright blue sea below, while the
fresh breeze fills your sails, and the great smooth waves toss you
lightly along, and spatter you at times with their glittering spray,
like frolicsome giants. But it is a very different thing to be out in
the teeth of a real equinoctial gale, with the whole sky black as ink,
and the whole sea one sheet of boiling foam, and a huge wave coming
thundering over the deck every other minute, sweeping everything before
it, and making the whole vessel tremble from stem to stern.

So, doubtless, thought Olaf Petersen, captain and owner of the Norwegian
schooner _Thyra_, of Bergen, when just such a storm caught him half way
across the North Sea. It _did_ seem rather hard, after escaping all the
storms of blustering March, that fresh, genial April should serve him
such a trick; but so it was, and instead of having a short and easy run
northeastward to Bergen, as he expected, he found himself flying away to
the west, driven by a gale which seemed strong enough to blow him right
round the world, if it did not happen to sink him by the way.

All the sails had long since been taken in, and the little craft was
scudding under bare poles, no one being on deck but the two men at the
wheel (who had quite enough to do keeping her head straight) and the
captain himself. A fine picture Olaf Petersen would have made as he
stood there, with the spray rattling like hail upon his drenched
tarpaulins, and his clear bright eye looking keenly out through the wet
hair that was plastered over his face. It might be seen by the firm set
of his mouth that he meant to fight it out while a plank would swim; but
he looked grave and anxious, nevertheless.

And well he might. This time it was not only his vessel and the lives of
himself and his crew that were in danger: his young wife was on board,
after whom the _Thyra_ had been named, and it was now too late to blame
himself for having granted her entreaty to be allowed to sail along with
him, instead of being left at home by herself for so many weary weeks,
without knowing whether he was alive or dead.

Still it blew harder, and harder yet. Had not the _Thyra_ been as good a
sea-boat as ever swam, it would have been all over with her. Even as it
was, she could