deck.

Miserable as the boys felt, they could not suppress an exclamation of
admiration at the magnificent scene before them. The sea was tossed up
in great masses of water, which, as they neared the ship, threatened to
overwhelm them, but which, as she rose on their summits, passed
harmlessly under her, hurling, however, tons of water upon her deck. The
wind was still blowing fiercely, but a rift in the clouds above, through
which the sun threw down a bright ray of light upon the tossing water,
showed that the gale was breaking.

The excitement of the scene, the difficulty of keeping their feet, and
the influence of the rushing wind, soon had the effect which their
father predicted. The boys' looks brightened, their courage returned;
and although they still had an occasional relapse of sickness, they felt
quite different beings, and would not have returned to the blank misery
of their cabins upon any consideration. They were soon able to eat a
piece of dry toast, which Mr. Hardy brought them up with a cup of tea at
breakfast-time, and to enjoy a basin of soup at twelve o'clock, after
which they pronounced themselves as cured.

By the afternoon the force of the wind had greatly abated, and although
a heavy sea still ran, the motion of the vessel was perceptibly easier.
The sun, too, shone out brightly and cheeringly, and Mr. Hardy was able
to bring the little girls, who had not suffered so severely as their
brothers, upon deck. Two more days of fine weather quite recruited all
the party; and great was their enjoyment as the _Barbadoes_ entered the
Tagus, and, steaming between its picturesque banks and past Cintra,
dropped her anchor off Lisbon.

As our object, however, is to relate the adventures of our young
settlers upon the Pampas of La Plate, we must not delay to describe the
pleasure they enjoyed in this their first experience in foreign lands,
nor to give an account of their subsequent voyage across the Atlantic,
or their admiration at the superb harbour of Rio. A few days' further
steaming and they arrived at the harbour of Buenos Ayres, where the two
great rivers, the Uruguay and the Parana, unite to form the wide sheet
of water called the River La Plate. It was night when the _Barbadoes_
dropped her anchor, and it was not until the morning that they obtained
their first view of their future home.

Very early were they astir, and as soon as it was broad daylight, all
four of the young ones were up on deck.