ll boat off the
Irish coast, may be thought a melancholy occurrence, but involving
nothing of particular interest. I see my error: if I wish to create an
effect, I must first prove that I am the son of a duke or a king. I
have begun at the wrong end.

However, let the reader sneer as he will at my predicament, there was
something sublime in the scene around me. The smallness of the craft
magnified the greatness of the waves. I literally enjoyed the
interesting situation which naval writers, who are not nautical, of
"seas running mountains high," so rejoice to describe. One wave on
either hand bounded my horizon. They were absolutely mountain waves to
me; and when our little walnut-shell got on the top of one, it is no
great stretch of metaphor to say, that we appeared ascending to the
clouds. We could not look down upon one wave, until we were fairly on
the back of another. Now, in a vessel of tolerable size, let the sea
rage at its worst, from the ship's decks you always look down upon it,
excepting now and then, when some short-lived giant will poke up its
overgrown head. But I must remember that I am in tow of the potato
craft.

Though she lay well up for the harbour's mouth, she could not fetch it,
so she tacked and tacked again, until nearly ten o'clock, at which time
we in the dinghy were half frozen, and almost wholly drowned. The moon
was now up, though partially obscured by flying rack, and in making a
land board, the honest Pat, in the command of the sloop, shortened the
tow-rope, and hailed us, telling us when we were well abreast of a
little sandy bight, to cast off, pull in, and haul up our boat above
high-water mark. We took his advice, and, without much difficulty,
found ourselves once more on terra firma.

I cannot help, in this place, making the reflection of the singular
events that the erratic life of a sailor produces. Here were evidently
three lives saved, among which was that of the future paragon of
reefers, and neither the saved nor the saviours knew even the names, or
saw distinctly the faces of each other. How many good and brave actions
we sailors do, and the careless world knows nothing about them. The
sailor's life is a series of common-place heroisms.

Well, here we are, landed on the coast of Ireland, but in what part we
knew not, and with every prospect of passing the night under the
grandest, but, in winter, the most uncomfortable roof in the world. The
two lads begge