and some German names hard to learn. We all made
friends with the captain and other officers, and many of the passengers.
The little band played regularly on certain days, and the sailors and
girls had a good many dances, though often they were swept by a wave
across the deck, quite out of time. The children were allowed to play on
deck, but carefully watched.

Still the weather continued the same, or changing slightly. But I was
able now to see all the grandeur of my surroundings, notwithstanding the
weather.

Oh, what solemn thoughts I had! How deeply I felt the greatness, the
power of the scene! The immeasurable distance from horizon to horizon;
the huge billows forever changing their shapes--now only a wavy and
rolling plain, now a chain of great mountains, coming and going farther
away; then a town in the distance, perhaps, with spires and towers and
buildings of gigantic dimensions; and mostly a vast mass of uncertain
shapes, knocking against each other in fury, and seething and foaming in
their anger; the grey sky, with its mountains of gloomy clouds, flying,
moving with the waves, as it seemed, very near them; the absence of any
object besides the one ship; and the deep, solemn groans of the sea,
sounding as if all the voices of the world had been turned into sighs
and then gathered into that one mournful sound--so deeply did I feel the
presence of these things, that the feeling became one of awe, both
painful and sweet, and stirring and warming, and deep and calm and
grand.

I thought of tempests and shipwreck, of lives lost, treasures destroyed,
and all the tales I had heard of the misfortunes at sea, and knew I had
never before had such a clear idea of them. I tried to realize that I
saw only a part of an immense whole, and then my feelings were terrible
in their force. I was afraid of thinking then, but could not stop it. My
mind would go on working, till I was overcome by the strength and power
that was greater than myself. What I did at such times I do not know. I
must have been dazed.

After a while I could sit quietly and gaze far away. Then I would
imagine myself all alone on the ocean, and Robinson Crusoe was very real
to me. I was alone sometimes. I was aware of no human presence; I was
conscious only of sea and sky and something I did not understand. And as
I listened to its solemn voice, I felt as if I had found a friend, and
knew that I loved the ocean. It seemed as if it were within as well a