proper and determined direction to eight miles an hour instead
of twelve.

Now, this makes a great difference in the effect produced upon the mind
by witnessing a storm at sea. If the passenger, as he surveys the scene,
feels that his ship, and all that it contains, has been seized by the
terrific power which he sees raging around him, and that they are all
entirely at its mercy,--that it is sweeping them away over the sea,
perhaps into the jaws of destruction, without any possible power, on
their part, of resistance or escape,--his mind is filled with the most
grand and solemn emotions. Such a flight as this, extending day after
day, perhaps for five hundred miles, over a raging sea, is really
sublime.

The Atlantic steamer never flies. She never yields in any way to the
fury of the gale, unless she gets disabled. While her machinery stands,
she moves steadily forward in her course; and so far as any idea of
danger is concerned, the passengers in their cabins and state rooms
below pay no more regard to the storm than a farmer's family do to the
whistling and howling of the wind among the chimneys of their house, in
a blustering night on land.

So much for the philosophy of a storm at sea, as witnessed by the
passengers on board an Atlantic steamer.

* * * * *

One night, when the steamer had been some time at sea, Rollo awoke, and
found himself more than usually unsteady in his berth. Sometimes he
slept upon his couch, and sometimes in his berth. This night he was in
his berth, and he found himself rolling from side to side in it, very
uneasily. The croaking of the ship, too, seemed to be much more violent
and incessant than it had been before. Rollo turned over upon his other
side, and drew up his knees in such a manner as to prevent himself from
rolling about quite so much, and then went to sleep again.

His sleep, however, was very much broken and disturbed, and he was at
last suddenly awakened by a violent lurch of the ship, which rolled him
over hard against the outer edge of his berth, and then back against the
inner edge of it again. There was a sort of cord, with large knobs upon
it, at different distances, which was hung like a bell cord from the
back side of the berth. Rollo had observed this cord before, but he did
not know what it was for. He now, however, discovered what it was for,
as, by grasping these knobs in his hands, he found that the cord was an
excellent thin