y evening I found a smack sailing for Portsmouth, and took my passage
by her. On reaching Southsea, and telling my aunt all that had
occurred, she very much approved of my plans, and encouraged me to set
off at once for Shetland. She sent all sorts of messages to old
friends, and to the children of old friends; for, as she remarked with a
sigh, it was too probable that many of the parents would have been
called away from the world.

Drawing a further supply of money from the bank, I went up to London by
the coach next morning. I won't stop to describe how I was bothered and
confused in London, and how heartily I wished myself out of it. I found
my way to London Bridge, and, after making many inquiries, I reached a
place where there were several Leith smacks moored together. One was
going to sail the next tide. I joyfully stepped aboard of her, and
still more happy was I to find myself clear of the Thames and out at
sea. We were just a week making the passage, which was very well,
considering that we had a foul wind for some hours and had to bring up
in Yarmouth Roads. From Leith I got on by another vessel to Aberdeen.
In that port I found a regular trader which sailed once a month to
Lerwick, in Shetland. She was a smack, but not equal in size to the
craft in which I had come down from London to Leith.

We had been out about three days when very heavy thick weather came on,
and a south-westerly gale sprung up, which came sweeping through the
passage between Orkney and Shetland, kicking up a terrific sea. The
smack behaved very well, but at last all that could be done was to set a
try-sail and to heave her to, and away we drifted we knew not where. I
had never before been in the North Seas, so I was not accustomed to such
dark gloomy weather--not but what it is bad enough in the English
Channel now and then--still it does not often last so long as it does up
in the north.

Day after day the clouds hung down over our heads, and the wind howled,
and the dark green seas kept leaping up around, as if eager to draw us
down under their angry foaming bosoms. We had a hard matter to cook our
provisions, and no very easy one to eat them raw or cooked. Suddenly
the wind shifted and blew as strongly as ever from the eastward, and
then from the northward, and then got back again into the old quarter,
and the master confessed that, for the life of him he could not tell
where he had drifted to.

"On which side of Shet