t that, he assured us, was only resorted to when a man's
voice could not possibly be heard in giving orders.

The captain was quite a study to us. On shore he presented the most
ordinary appearance. When we had been out two or three days, I noticed
some one I had not seen before on deck, and thought to myself, "That is
an apparition for a time of danger,--a man as resolute as the sea
itself, so stern and gray-looking." I was quite bewildered, for I
thought I must certainly before that have seen every one on board. It
proved to be the captain in his storm-clothes. One of the sailors was a
Russian serf, running away, as he said, from the Czar of Russia, not
wholly believing in the safety of the serfs. He had shipped as a
competent sea-man; but when he was sent up to the top of the
mizzen-mast, to fix the halliards for a signal, he stopped in the most
perilous place, and announced that he could not go any farther. It seems
that every man on board was a stranger to the captain. It filled us with
anxiety to think how much depended on that one man. One night there was
an alarm of "A man overboard!" If it had been the captain, how aimlessly
we should have drifted on! I liked to listen, when we were below, to
hear the men hoisting the sails, and shouting together. It sounded as if
they were managing horses, now restraining them, and now cheering them
on. When the captain put his hand on the helm, we could always tell
below. There was as much difference as in driving. In the midst of the
wildest plunging, he would suddenly quiet it by putting the vessel in
some other position, just as he would have held in a rearing horse.

Two or three times, when there was a little lull, I went on deck; and
the air was as balmy as from a garden. What can it mean, this fragrance
of fresh flowers in the midst of the sea?

Some virtues, I think, are admirably cultivated at sea. Night after
night, as we lay there, I said to the captain, "What is the meaning of
those clouds?" or "that dull red sky?" And he answered so composedly,
"It's going to be squally," that I admired his patience; but it wore
upon us very much.

At length, one night, as I lay looking up through our little skylight,
at the flapping of the great white spanker-sheet,--my special enemy and
dread, because the captain would keep it up when I thought it unsafe, it
seemed such a lawless thing, and so ready to overturn us every time it
shifted,--a great cheerful star looked in. It m