looking the very
configuration of "Gamle Norge."

The sameness of all other seas is not forbidden to this northern one;
and except a more constant repetition of squalls and showers of rain, I
distinguished the great family likeness. The 8th of August passed
pleasantly enough, and for those souls which can absorb the sublimity of
water, and soar to the infinity of space, the scene might have seemed
wondrous in width and height; but the subsequent day, while sitting
below and reading, I heard a tremendous racket on deck, and before I
could exactly arrange the different sounds, the main-sail and
gaff-topsail came to the deck "with a run;" and for aught I knew to the
contrary, but strongly imagined, the gib and foresail followed their
example with like expedition.

"We shall go up in the air, like a balloon!" one of the sailors, with a
twang of horror in his voice, exclaimed.

"Ay, or swamped!" a second suggested, loudly, with dreadful
determination.

"Ay, ay; and the deck's as good as stove in!" growled a third nautical
son of a Shuhite.

I threw the book I had been perusing on the cabin table, and hurried
towards the staircase; but one of my friends met me at the door, and
moving with the same velocity as myself, we came into sharp collision.
He rebounded to the right, and I recoiled to the left hand.

"For God's sake, get out of the way," said he, out of breath, and
recovering his legs as fast as he could.

"What's the matter?" I asked, with much alarm. "Is the vessel on fire,
or what?"

"No;--nothing," replied he, with a wildness of look that foretold
anything but nothing. "Here, steward!" he called out at the top of his
voice,--"Alfred!--Gandy!--cook!"--dismay expanding the sources of
information, and adding loudness to his vociferation--"Where's my gun?"

The steward, Alfred, Gandy, and the cook were busily employed elsewhere,
for they made no reply, and my friend soon found, without their
assistance, what, at first, confusion of mind had hid from his sight.

Breathless, too, with the flushed face and disordered dress of haste and
horror, my other fellow traveller came thundering down the companion,
and the thick shooting-boots he commonly wore clattered the importance
of his approach.

"Gracious heaven!" I exclaimed, "What is all this about? If I am to
be----"

"Where's the powder?" asked he, and brushing by me, like a rocket, to
get across the cabin, brought his shoulder so forcibly in contact with