essary. Much in the same way do men feel it
difficult to believe in the importance of preparing for another world,
when the tide of prosperity carries them along, without care or anxiety,
over the sea of life. I have often thought that a gale of wind, a
lee-shore on a dark night, and the risk of shipwreck, are of use to
seamen, to make them prepare for the dangers which sooner or later must
come upon them. So are all misfortunes--pain, sorrow, loss of friends,
deprivation of worldly honours or position--sent to remind people that
this world is not their abiding-place; that they are sent into it only
that they may have the opportunity of preparing in it for another and a
better world, which will last for eternity.

Hour after hour passed away. Still the calm continued. I suspect the
officers themselves began to doubt whether the looked-for hurricane
would ever come. I asked Peter what he thought about it.

"Come! ay, that it will," he replied. "More reason that it will come
with all its strength and fury because it is delayed. Look out there!
do you see that?"

He pointed towards the now distant land. A dark cloud seemed to be
rushing out from that direction, and extending rapidly on either side,
while below the cloud a long line of white foam came hissing and rolling
on towards us. As it reached the spot where we lay, the little vessel
heeled over till I thought she would never rise again, and then she was
turned round and round as if she had been a piece of straw. Loudly
roared and howled the fierce blast, and on she drove helplessly before
it. Every instant the sea rose higher and higher, and the schooner
began to pitch, and toss, and tumble about, till I thought she would
have been shaken to pieces.

"Peter," said I, "we are in a bad way, I am afraid."

"We should have been in a very much worse way had the wind come from
another quarter, and driven us towards the land," he replied, gravely.
"Some of the people had begun to grumble because we had been drifted so
far off-shore. We may now be thankful that we were not caught nearer to
it, and have already made so much offing. We shall very likely have it
round again, and then we shall require all the distance we have come to
drive in, and none to spare."

"I was thinking of the chance we have of going to the bottom," said I,
looking at the huge seas which kept tumbling tumultuously around us.

"Not much fear of that," he answered. "We are in a stro