enterprise, went on board a ship of an hundred
and twenty guns; the vast hull drifted with the tide out of the bay, and
after many hours its crew of landsmen contrived to spread a great part of
her enormous canvass--the wind took it, and while a thousand mistakes of
the helmsman made her present her head now to one point, and now to
another, the vast fields of canvass that formed her sails flapped with a
sound like that of a huge cataract; or such as a sea-like forest may give
forth when buffeted by an equinoctial north-wind. The port-holes were open,
and with every sea, which as she lurched, washed her decks, they received
whole tons of water. The difficulties were increased by a fresh breeze
which began to blow, whistling among the shrowds, dashing the sails this
way and that, and rending them with horrid split, and such whir as may have
visited the dreams of Milton, when he imagined the winnowing of the
arch-fiend's van-like wings, which encreased the uproar of wild chaos.
These sounds were mingled with the roaring of the sea, the splash of the
chafed billows round the vessel's sides, and the gurgling up of the water
in the hold. The crew, many of whom had never seen the sea before, felt
indeed as if heaven and earth came ruining together, as the vessel dipped
her bows in the waves, or rose high upon them. Their yells were drowned in
the clamour of elements, and the thunder rivings of their unwieldy
habitation--they discovered at last that the water gained on them, and
they betook themselves to their pumps; they might as well have laboured to
empty the ocean by bucketfuls. As the sun went down, the gale encreased;
the ship seemed to feel her danger, she was now completely water-logged,
and presented other indications of settling before she went down. The bay
was crowded with vessels, whose crews, for the most part, were observing
the uncouth sportings of this huge unwieldy machine--they saw her
gradually sink; the waters now rising above her lower decks--they could
hardly wink before she had utterly disappeared, nor could the place where
the sea had closed over her be at all discerned. Some few of her crew were
saved, but the greater part clinging to her cordage and masts went down
with her, to rise only when death loosened their hold.

This event caused many of those who were about to sail, to put foot again
on firm land, ready to encounter any evil rather than to rush into the
yawning jaws of the pitiless ocean. But