ened down
the hatches, intending to heave the vessel to, should the gale not
abate.

I had been well accustomed to face bad weather in the Channel in my
little vessel, and so had my boys; and I knew well what she would do;
but when they saw the heavy seas now rolling up towards us, their young
cheeks turned pale with alarm. It certainly did look as if one of those
heavy, moving, dark green, watery hills rising up on every side, with
the spoon-drift flying from their summits, must ere long engulf us; but
the tight little craft, buoyant as a cork, with her stout masts and
strong new canvas, every rope well served, and not a strand even chafed,
rose up, and then sunk down the steep slopes into the wide valleys
between the seas, not one breaking aboard us, though we were every now
and then pretty well blinded with the showers of spray which drove
across the deck. Still we could not tell what might happen, and the
time was an anxious one. At last, when I found how beautifully the
schooner was behaving, I determined to call my wife and daughters up,
that they might witness a sight which I certainly hoped they might never
have to look on again. I slid back the companion hatch and called them.
My wife would not venture to move, but Mary and Susan came up. They
stood for a minute or more with their eyes opening and very pale; Mary
holding my arm, Susan her brother's.

"I called you girls to show you what the ocean is like sometimes,
happily not very often."

Mary continued silent for some time. At last she gasped out, "Oh,
father, what nothings we are!"

"That's what many a seaman feels, even on board a line-of-battle ship,
when in a sea like this, though he doesn't say it," I remarked. "Yes,
Mary, we are indeed nothing, but we are in the hands of God, and He it
is with His wise laws governs the movement of every one of those vast
mountain billows. Let but one of them in our track go out of its
course, and this little craft, ay, and the biggest afloat, would be
utterly overwhelmed and driven down by the tremendous weight of water
which would fall over her."

Mary stood gazing, lost in wonder, and not a little fear also, and
unable to speak. However, when I proposed her going below again, she
was very unwilling to quit the deck. "I shall dream of this for many a
night," she said.

While I was speaking, I caught sight of a sail to the eastward. I
looked for her again, as we rose to the top of the next sea, and p