visions, wood, and water, she again put to sea to
join a squadron in the North Seas. Winter came on, and as she lay in
Yarmouth Roads, directions were sent to Captain Order to prepare for the
reception of an ambassador, or some other great man, who was to be
conveyed to the Elbe, and landed at Cuxhaven, or any other place where
he could be put on shore and make his way to his destination.

It was early in February, but the weather was unusually fine, and off
the compact little island of Heligoland a signal was made for a pilot,
who came on board and assured the captain that there was not the
slightest difficulty in getting up the Elbe to Cuxhaven, if he would but
proceed at between half-flood and half-ebb, when he could see the sand
on either hand. All the buoys in the river had, however, been carried
away, he observed, to prevent the enemy from getting up. With a
favourable breeze the frigate stood up the river, guided by the
experienced pilot. While the weather continued fine, the task was one
of no great difficulty, though with a wintry wind blowing and the
thermometer far down below the freezing-point, it was anything but a
pleasant one.

"Faith, I'd rather be back stewing away among the niggers in the West
Indies, would not you, Gerrard?" exclaimed Paddy O'Grady, beating his
hands against his sides to keep them warm.

"I should not mind it for a change, if it was not to last long; but I
confess I don't wish it to be colder," said Paul.

"Why, lads, this is nothing to what I have had to go through in the
North Seas," remarked Bruff. "I've known it so cold that every drop of
spray which came on board froze, and I've seen the whole deck, and every
spar and rope one mass of ice, so that there was no getting the ropes to
run through the sheaves of the blocks, and as to furling sails, which
were mere sheets of ice, that was next to an impossibility. I warn you,
if you don't like what we have got now, you'll like still less what is
coming. There are some heavy snow-clouds driving up, and we shall have
a shift of wind soon."

The frigate had now got up to within four miles of Cuxhaven, when, at
about four o'clock, as the winter's day was closing in, it, as Bruff had
anticipated, came on to snow so thickly that the pilot could no longer
see the marks, and it accordingly became necessary to anchor. Later in
the evening, when darkness had already set in, the wind shifted to the
southward of east, and the snow fel