rive all the passengers below, and pen them in with closed hatches
and storm-shutters, (so hot, Emmy, that the black-hole of Calcutta must
have been an ice-house to it: how the foolish people abused our wise
skipper, and more than one pompous old Indian threatened him with an
action for false imprisonment!) this huddling away was the first effort;
and simultaneously with it, the crew were all over the rigging, furling
sails, hurriedly, hurriedly.

"Meanwhile (for I was last on deck), that little cloud seemed whirling
within itself, and many others gathered round it, all dancing about on
the horizon, as if sheaves of mischief tossed about by devils: I don't
wish to be poetical, Emmy, for my heart is very, very sad; but if ever
the powers of the air sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, they were
gathering in their harvest at that door. Underneath the skipping clouds,
which came on quickly, leaping over each other, as when the wain is
loaded by a score of hands, I noticed a sea approaching, such as Pharaoh
must have seen, when the wall of waters fell upon him; and premonitory
winds came whistling by, and two or three sails were flapping in them
still, and I was hurried down stairs after all the rest of us.

"Then, on a sudden, it appeared not winds, nor waves, nor thunder, but
as if the squadroned cavalry of heaven had charged across the seas, and
crushed our battered ship beneath their horse-hoofs! We were flung down
flat on our beam ends; and the two or three unfurled sails, bursting
with the noise of a cannon, were scattered miles away to lee-ward as if
they had been paper. As for the poor fellows in the rigging, the spirit
of the storm had already made them his: twenty of our men were swept
away by that tornado.

"Then there was hewing and cleaving on deck, the clatter of many axes
and hatchets: for we were in imminent danger of being capsized, keel
uppermost, and our only chance was to cut away the masts.

"The muscles of courage were tried then, my Emmy, and the strength which
religion gives a man. I felt sensibly held up by the Everlasting Arms: I
could listen to the still small Voice in the midst of a crash which
might have been the end of all things: though in darkness, God had given
me light; though in uttermost peril, my peace was never calmer in our
little village school.

"And the billows were knocking at the poor ship's side like sledge
hammers; and the lightnings fell around us scorchingly, with forked