d a hunt after a box that had broken loose;
another was lamenting the necessity of getting up after his
washhand-basin and placing his legs in peril outside his bunk. Before
breakfast I went on deck to look at the scene. It was still blowing a
gale. We were under topsails and mainsail, with a close-reefed
top-sail on the mizen-mast. The sight from the poop is splendid. At
one moment we were high up on the top of a wave, looking into a deep
valley behind us; at another we were down in the trough of the sea,
with an enormous wall of water coming after us. The pure light-green
waves were crested with foam, which curled over and over, and never
stopped rolling. The deck lay over at a dreadful slant to a landsman's
eye; indeed, notwithstanding holding on to everything I could catch, I
fell four times during the morning.

With difficulty I reached the saloon, where the passengers had
assembled for breakfast. Scarcely had we taken out seats when an
enormous sea struck the ship, landed on the poop, dashed in the saloon
skylight, and flooded the table with water. This was a bad event for
those who had not had their breakfast. As I was mounting the cuddy
stairs, I met the captain coming down thoroughly soaked. He had been
knocked down, and had to hold on by a chain to prevent himself being
washed about the deck. The officer of the watch afterwards told me
that he had seen his head bobbing up and down amidst the water, of
which there were tons on the poop.

This was what they call "shipping a green sea,"--so called because so
much water is thrown upon the deck that it ceases to have the frothy
appearance of smaller seas when shipped, but looks a mass of solid
green water. Our skipper afterwards told us at dinner that the captain
of the 'Essex' had not long ago been thrown by such a sea on to one of
the hen-coops that run round the poop, breaking through the iron bars,
and that he had been so bruised that he had not yet entirely recovered
from his injuries. Such is the tremendous force of water in violent
motion at sea.[2]

When I went on deck again, the wind had somewhat abated, but the sea
was still very heavy. While on the poop, one enormous wave came
rolling on after us, seeming as if it must engulf the ship. But the
stern rose gradually and gracefully as the huge wave came on, and it
rolled along, bubbling over the sides of the main-deck, and leaving it
about two feet deep in water. As the day wore on the wind gradually
we