of a rope and saved myself, made my heart
come in my mouth; and what with this, and the turmoil of the elements
around me as I clung to the yard, with the deck of the ship so small and
far-away below, and saw the immense area of the swelling sea as far as
the eye could reach--now chopped up into short rolling waves, crowned
with foam, almost in an instant, and the black cloud-covered dome of the
heavens that was almost as dark as at midnight--I could not help
thinking of the grandeur of the works of God, and the insignificance of
man and his pigmy attempts to master the elements.

For, beyond the quick sharp puffs of wind that came with the squalls of
rain from almost every point of the compass in succession, the downpour
which descended from the overcast sky was accompanied with terrible ear-
splitting peals of thunder. This seemed to rattle and roll almost
immediately above our heads, as if the overhanging black vault was about
to burst open every moment; while dazzling forked flashes of bluish
lightning zigzagged across the horizon from the zenith, first blinding
our eyes with its brilliancy for a second and then making the darkness
all around the darker as the vivid glare vanished and the accompanying
thunderbolt sank into the sea--providentially far off to leeward, where
the full force of the tropical storm was spent, and not near our vessel.

The sight was an awful and magnificent one to me suspended there in mid-
air, as it were; but I confess I was not sorry when, presently, the
mizzen-topgallant was snugly stowed, with the gaskets put round it, and
I was able to get down to the more substantial deck below, where I was
not quite so close to the cloud war going on above!

When I reached the poop, as the Silver Queen was now stripped of her
superfluous canvas and ready for anything that might happen should the
squalls last, Mr Mackay seeing that I was wet through told me that I
might go down and change my clothes. This I gratefully did, feeling all
the better on getting into a dry suit, over which I took the precaution
before coming out of the deck-house again of rigging my waterproof and a
tarpaulin hat; for the rain was still coming down in a regular deluge,
"as if the sluice-valve of the water tank above had somehow or other
jammed foul, so that the water couldn't be turned off for a while"--this
being Tom Jerrold's explanation of it.

Feeling chilled from the damp after the great heat of the morning, as