Happily, the wave had nearly spent its force and was
now so rapidly diffused that his refuge was not quite overflowed.

Of course, those who have voyaged and not suffered will pronounce my
general picture grossly exaggerated; wherein they will be faithful to
their own experience, as I am to mine. I write for the benefit of the
uninitiated, to warn them, not against braving the ocean when they must
or ought, but against resorting to it for pastime. Voyaging cannot be
enjoyment to most of them; it must be suffering. The sonorous rhymesters
in praise of "A Life on the Ocean Wave," "The Sea! the Sea! the Open
Sea!" &c. were probably never out of sight of land in a gale in their
lives. If they were ever "half seas over," the liquid which buoyed them
up was not brine, but wine, which is quite another affair. And, as they
are continually luring people out of soundings who might far better have
remained on terra firma, I lift up my voice in warning against them. "A
home on the raging deep," is _not_ a scene of enjoyment, even to the
sailor, who suffers only from hardship and exposure; no other laborer's
wages are so dearly earned as his, and his season of enjoyment is not
the voyage but the stay in port. He is compelled to work hardest just
when other out-door laborers deem working at all out of the question. To
him Night and Day are alike in their duties as in their exemptions;
while the more furious and blinding the tempest, the greater must be his
exertions, perils and privations. In fair weather his hours of rest are
equal to his hours of labor; in bad weather he may have _no_ hours of
rest whatever. Should he find such, he flings himself into his bunk for
a few hours in his wet clothes, and turns out smoking like a coal-pit at
the next summons to duty, to be drenched afresh in the cold affusions of
sea and sky--and so on. An old sea-captain assured me that his crew were
sometimes in wet clothing throughout an Atlantic voyage.

Our weather was certainly bad, though not the worst. We started on our
course, after leaving Sandy-Hook, in the teeth of a North-Easter, and it
clung to us like a brother. It varied to East North-East, East
South-East, South East, and occasionally condescended to blow a little
from nearly North or nearly South, but we had not six hours of Westerly
or semi-Westerly wind throughout the passage. There may have been two
days in all, though I think not, in which some of the principal sails
could be made t