are not so
violent as elsewhere. Here we used to remain until nearly time for
slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set
out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and
coming--one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--and
we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice, during six
years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead
calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to
remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a
gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too
boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been
driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for the whirlpools threw us
round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor
and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the
innumerable cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove
us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.

"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered 'on the grounds'--it is a bad spot to be in, even in
good weather--but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the
Moskoe-stroem itself without accident; although at times my heart has
been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before
the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at
starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while
the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son
eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have
been of great assistance at such times, in using the sweeps, as well as
afterward in fishing--but, somehow, although we ran the risk ourselves,
we had not the heart to let the young ones get into the danger--for,
after all is said and done, it _was_ a horrible danger, and that is the
truth.

"It is now within a few days of three years since what I am going to
tell you occurred. It was on the tenth day of July, 18-, a day which the
people of this part of the world will never forget--for it was one
in which blew the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of
the heavens. And yet all the morning, and indeed until late in the
afternoon, there was a gentle and steady breeze from the south-west,
while the sun shone brightly, so that the oldest seaman among us could
not have foreseen what was