as they advanced against the wind, and, breaking away in fragments,
blew off in masses of snowy whiteness to leeward. The ship was meeting
this swell nearly head on; and as the rollers caught her fairly on the
bows she struck them with a sound as heavy as that with which the weight
falls in a pile-driving machine, taking in some of the sea over the
forecastle and carrying it aft as far as the break of the poop--washing
about everything in its course until the water finally found vent from
the deck through the scuppers.

One of these waves--a regular mountain of a sea, the water all green,
and standing up like a huge pellucid wall before it toppled over--coming
in over the bows, made a clean sweep of all that was movable lying
forward of the mainmast, carrying over the side all the hen-coops,
sheep-pen, water casks, as well as spare spars that had been stowed
along the deck, nothing being left to show that they had ever been
there! Even Snowball's galley was upset and rolled about in the waist
to leeward, the sea having not been quite strong enough to carry it
overboard, while its unhappy occupant, half drowned in the scuppers and
not able to extricate himself from his perilous position, was loudly
calling for aid.

Ben Boltrope--who had been having a confab with the darkey, and probably
a "drop of something hot," his special failing, in the galley when the
sea washed over the ship and fetched it away--was promptly at hand to
help his sable friend; when the galley was reinstated in its proper
place, and so tightly lashed down to the ring-bolts that a sea would
have had to carry away the deck itself to have lifted it again. But,
sad to relate, the sheep and the poultry had disappeared for ever from
human ken, along with their pens and coops, and the saloon passengers
would thenceforth have to fare without any such delicacies as roast
mutton and boiled fowl--a terrible piece of news for Mr Lathrope when
it was brought to his ears!

As the evening closed in and night came on, the force of the wind and
sea both seemed to increase, and it appeared incredible that a fabric
formed by human hands should have been capable of sustaining the rude
shocks and ponderous blows which the ship received again and again as
she battled with the waves; but the captain had in the end to let the
vessel fall off her course and scud before the gale, going whither the
elements listed.

"Oh, father," said Kate to Mr Meldrum, the two remaini