, but wildly excited and
determined to see out, what a landsman has but seldom a chance of
seeing, a great gale of wind at sea, I clung tight to the starboard
bulwarks of Mr. Richard Green's new clipper, Sultan, Captain Sneezer,
about an hour after dark, as she was rounding the Horn, watching much
such a scene as I have attempted to give you a notion of above. And as
I held on there, wishing that the directors of my insurance office
could see me at that moment, the first mate, coming from forward,
warping himself from one belayingpin to another, roared in my ear,
"that he thought it was going to blow."

"Man! man!" I said, "do you mean to tell me it is not blowing now?"

"A bit of a breeze," he roared; but his roar came to me like a whisper.
However, I pretty soon found out that this was something quite out of
the common; for, crawling up, along the gangway which runs between the
poophouse and the bulwarks, I came with great difficulty to the stern;
and there I saw the two best men in the larboard watch (let us
immortalize them, they were Deaf Bob, and Harry the digger), lashed to
the wheel, and the Skipper himself, steadfast and anxious, alongside of
them, lashed to a cleat on the afterpart of the deck-house. So thinks
I, if these men are made fast, this is no place for me to be loose in,
and crawled down to my old place in the waist, at the after end of the
spare topsail-yard, which was made fast to the starboard-bulwarks, and
which extended a little abaft of the main shrouds.

If any gentleman can detect a nautical error in that last sentence, I
shall feel obliged by his mentioning it.

Somebody who came forth from the confusion, and was gone again,
informed me that "He was going to lay her to, and that I'd better hold
on." I comforted myself with the reflection that I was doing exactly
the right thing, holding on like grim death.

Then something happened, and I am sorry to say I don't exactly know
what. I find in my notes, taken shortly afterwards, from the dictation
of an intelligent midshipman, "that the fore royal-yard got jammed with
the spanker-boom, and carried away the larboard quarter boat." Nautical
friends have since pointed out to me that this involves an
impossibility. I daresay it does. I know it involved an impossibility
of turning in without subjecting yourself to a hydropathic remedy of
violent nature, by going to bed in wet blankets, and of getting
anything for breakfast besides wet biscuit and