nes would "never say die," on having to beat
a precipitate retreat to their cabins. They would return again, I
assure you, in a few minutes, to resume the repast which had been
temporarily interrupted; smiling as if nothing had happened, and
showing, too, that nothing _had_ happened, to seriously interfere with
their deglutinal faculties!

This was not my first voyage--I did not tell you so before?

Well, suppose I did not; don't you remember my saying that I was not
aware of being under any obligation to you which would make me regard
you as the receptor of _all_ my secrets?

This was not my first voyage, I say; consequently, ship-board life was
no novelty to me--nor the Atlantic Ocean, either, for that matter. I
was used to the one, I had seen the other previously. I was as much at
home to both, in fact, as I had been in the vicarage parlour standing
beside dear little Miss Pimpernell's old arm-chair in the chimney
corner!

I love the sea, in rest or unrest.

It is never monotonous to me, as some find it; for I think it ever-
changing, ever new. I love it always--under every aspect of its
kaleidoscopic face.

When, bright with mellow sunshine, it reflects the intense blue of the
ocean sky above, with a brisk breeze topping its many-furrowed waves--
that are racing by and leaping over each other like a parcel of
schoolboys at play--and cutting off sheets and sparkling showers of the
prismatic foam that exhibits every tint of the rainbow--azure and
orange, violet, light-green, and pale luminous white,--scatters it
broadcast into the air around; whence it falls into yeasty hollows, a
sort of feathery snow of a fairy texture, just suited for the bridal
veils of the Nereides--only to be churned over again and tossed up anew
by the wanton wind in its frolicsome mirth.

Or, when, in a dead calm, it appears to lie sleeping, heaving its tumid
bosom in occasional long-drawn sighs--that make it rise and sink in
rounded ridges of an oily look and a leadeny tinge, except at the
equator, where they shine at midday like a burnished mirror.

Or, again, when storm-tossed and tempest-weary, it rages and raves with
all its pent-up fury broken loose--goaded to frenzy by the howling
lashes of Aeolus and the roar of the storm-fiend. Then it is grand and
awful in its majesty; and when I see it so it makes me mad with a
triumphant sense of power in overriding it--as it boils beneath the
vessel's keel, longing to overwhelm it a