wind, heavier rolled the sea, yet never a drop of water did we ship,
nor did anything about the deck betoken what a heavy gale was blowing.
During the worst of the weather, and just after the wind had shifted
back into the N.E., making an uglier cross sea than ever get up,
along comes an immense four-masted iron ship homeward bound. She was
staggering under a veritable mountain of canvas, fairly burying her bows
in the foam at every forward drive, and actually wetting the clews of
the upper topsails in the smothering masses of spray, that every few
minutes almost hid her hull from sight.

It was a splendid picture; but--for the time--I felt glad I was not on
board of her. In a very few minutes she was out of our ken, followed
by the admiration of all. Then came, from the other direction, a huge
steamship, taking no more notice of the gale than as if it were calm.
Straight through the sea she rushed, dividing the mighty rollers to the
heart, and often bestriding three seas at once, the centre one spreading
its many tons of foaming water fore and aft, so that from every orifice
spouted the seething brine. Compared with these greyhounds of the wave,
we resembled nothing so much as some old lightship bobbing serenely
around, as if part and parcel of the mid-Atlantic.

Our greenies were getting so well seasoned by this time that even this
rough weather did not knock any of them over, and from that time forward
they had no more trouble from sea-sickness.

The gale gradually blew itself out, leaving behind only a long and very
heavy swell to denote the deep-reaching disturbance that the ocean had
endured. And now we were within the range of the Sargasso Weed, that
mysterious FUCUS that makes the ocean look. like some vast hayfield, and
keeps the sea from rising, no matter how high the wind. It fell a dead
calm, and the harpooners amused themselves by dredging up great masses
of the weed, and turning out the many strange creatures abiding therein.
What a world of wonderful life the weed is, to be sure! In it the
flying fish spawn and the tiny cuttle-fish breed, both of them preparing
bounteous provision for the larger denizens of the deep that have
no other food. Myriads of tiny crabs and innumerable specimens of
less-known shell-fish, small fish of species as yet unclassified in
any work on natural history, with jelly-fish of every conceivable and
inconceivable shape, form part of this great and populous country in the
sea.