nutes before it seemed we were gliding
smoothly on before a favourable breeze, under topsails and
top-gallant-sails; now the ship was madly plunging into the foam-covered
tossing seas.

"All hands shorten sail!" cried Mr Renshaw, the first officer.

"All hands shorten sail!" was repeated along the decks.

"I thought how it would be when I saw the nightcap on the top of the
Horn," muttered old Ben Yool. "We shall have a sneezer before we have
done with it, and it may be this day month won't see us round the Cape."

Old Ben's prognostications were not very pleasant, for we were anxious
to be round the Cape among the wonders we expected to behold in the
Pacific. Scarcely was the order given, than the crew were in the
rigging. Top-gallant-sails were quickly stowed, three reefs were taken
in the topsails, and the courses were brailed up and furled. This was
done not a moment too soon: the mighty seas came rolling up mountains
beyond mountains, with wide valleys between them, into whose depths the
ship plunged down from each watery height as it came under her, seeming
as if she could never rise again. Still once more she was lifted
upwards among showers of spray, which flew off from the white-crested
seas, deluging us fore and aft. Overhead the wild scud flew fast, the
stern Cape looked more solitary and grand, and the sea-fowl with
discordant shrieks flew round and round, closing in the circles they
were forming till they almost touched our masts. The ship struggled
bravely onward on the starboard-tack, rapidly increasing her distance
from the land, but making very little way to the westward.

More than once I held my breath and clenched my teeth, as I felt the
ship sending forward, and saw the wide, deep valley into which she was
plunging, and the long, huge, watery height rolling on towards us, and
looking as if it must overwhelm us. And then, when having, by a miracle
it seemed, escaped the threatened danger, to see another valley just as
deep and wide, and another mountain just as big--and to know that though
we might rush ever so fast onward, we should find valley after valley
just as deep, and mountain after mountain just as big for days and days,
or weeks to come, perhaps; when, too, I heard the howling and whistling
of the wind, and the creaking and complaining of the timbers and
bulkheads, and the roar and dash of the seas,--I own that I could not
help wishing that my feet were planted on some firm groun