on of any fancy his sickly state might prompt
him to make. R---- told him, also, to join the yacht at Cowes when he
returned to England. King lived to see the English shores again, and
gratefully, in the blunt, pathetic language of a sailor, to thank his
amiable benefactor. He fills, at this moment, his old post.

Although the afternoon was calm, the cutter dropped rapidly down the
Fiord, until within four miles of the sea. The pilot, one of the most
expert at Bergen, had been very anxious to get the yacht clear from the
land before night-fall, that he might be on his homeward way in good
time; nor were we less desirous of taking our departure before set of
sun. But Fortune seems ever to act towards some men with the sincerest
malice. About half a league, as I have said, from the mouth of this
Fiord, one of many that conducts to Bergen, and on the starboard shore,
is a rock that juts towards the centre of the channel, and forms a small
bay. Mariners know the spot well, and avoid it. The surrounding scenery,
fraught with the natural softness of beauty and severe grandeur of
Norway, resembles most other things that bear, seductively, external
comeliness, and carry an antidote unseen. The bay is a whirlpool. Our
hyperboreal Palinurus was perfectly acquainted with this modern
Charybdis, and used every stratagem of which he was master, to escape
it; but the wind being light, left the cutter to the mercy of the
current. Nearly three hours the yacht did nothing else but revolve, as
if she were fixed on a pivot, and not all the united exertions of the
crew could tow her out of the eddy.

The unhappy pilot stamped his foot every time the cutter took a fresh
whirl, and called his favourite Odin to witness his dilemma; but Odin
paid as much deference to his prayers as Hercules did, of yore, to the
waggoner who got the wheel of his cart in the rut. The cutter wearied
not in her waltz; but, whether she felt the want of a partner, or the
power of the wind, I know not; for when the pilot had lighted his pipe,
and given his soul to its soporific ward, she darted unexpectedly out of
the circling haven, and ceased not in her flight until the first wave of
the Ocean leaped up against her bow with so much rude impetuosity that
her hull staggered under its force, and her gaff-topsail shook with
anger at such lack of gentleness.

Amid a multitudinous salute of "Farvael!" the pilot bundled into his
pram; and even now I see him tossed about,