ove and below the mouth of the
straits, converge after the manner of a tunnel. The tidal wave from
the Atlantic is thus accumulated, and pours into the straits with much
more than ordinary violence. The same thing occurs in the Bay of
Fundy, where they have very high tides. But I had no idea of such
violence," he added, "or I shouldn't have risked the schooner so near
the rocks. Why, that inlet ran like Niagara rapids!"

"What an evidence this gives one of the strength of the moon's
attraction!" said Raed. "All this great mass of water--thirty feet
high--is drawn in here by the moon. What enormous force!"

"And this vast power is exerted over a distance of two hundred and
thirty-eight thousand miles," remarked Kit.

"I can't understand this attraction of gravitation,--how it is
exerted," said Wade.

"No more can anyone," replied Raed.

"It is said that this attraction of the moon, or at least the friction
of the tides on the ocean-bed which it causes, is exerted in
opposition to the revolution of the earth on its axis, and that it
will thus at some future time stop that motion altogether," Kit
remarked. "That's what Prof. Tyndall thinks."

"Then there would be an end of day and night," said I; "or rather it
would be all day on one side of the earth, and all night on the
other."

"That would be unpleasant," laughed Wade; "worse than they have it up
at the north pole."

"It is some consolation," said Raed, "to know that such a state of
things is not likely to come in our time. According to a careful
calculation, the length of the day is not thus increased more than a
second in a hundred and sixty-eight thousand years."

"But how are we to go aboard, sir?" inquired Hobbs, to whom our
present fix was of more interest than the long days of far-distant
posterity.

The boat had been tossed about here and there, and was now some twenty
or thirty yards astern of the schooner.

"Have to swim for it," said Donovan.

"Not in this icy water, I hope," said Kit. "Can't we devise a plan to
capture it?"

"They might tie a belaying-pin to the end of a line, and throw it into
the boat," said the captain.

"Or, better still, one of those long cod-lines with the heavy sinker
and hook on it," suggested Hobbs.

"Just the thing!" exclaimed Capt. Mazard. "Sing out to them!"

"Unless I'm mistaken, that is just what old Trull is up to now," said
Wade. "He's throwing something! see that!"

As Wade said, old man Trull was th