nce who is ever watchful
over us.

The captain stood before the wheel, watching the men who were steering
the ship; for when you are running before a heavy gale, it requires
great attention to the helm: and as he looked around him and up at the
heavens, he sang in a low voice the words of a sea song:

"One wide water all around us,
All above us one black sky."

And so it was with them;--they were in the middle of the Atlantic, not
another vessel to be seen, and the heavens were covered with black
clouds, which were borne along furiously by the gale; the sea ran
mountains high, and broke into large white foaming crests, while the
fierce wind howled through the rigging of the vessel.

Besides the captain of the ship and the two men at the wheel, there were
two other personages on deck: one was a young lad about twelve years
old, and the other a weather-beaten old seaman, whose grisly locks were
streaming in the wind, as he paced aft and looked over the taffrail of
the vessel.

The young lad, observing a heavy sea coming up to the stern of the
vessel, caught hold of the old man's arm, crying out--"Won't that great
wave come into us, Ready?"

"No, Master William, it will not: don't you see how the ship lifts her
quarters to it?--and now it has passed underneath us. But it might
happen, and then what would become of you, if I did not hold on, and
hold you on also? You would be washed overboard."

"I don't like the sea much, Ready; I wish we were safe on shore again,"
replied the lad. "Don't the waves look as if they wished to beat the
ship all to pieces?"

"Yes, they do; and they roar as if angry because they cannot bury the
vessel beneath them: but I am used to them, and with a good ship like
this, and a good captain and crew, I don't care for them."

"But sometimes ships do sink, and then everybody is drowned."

"Yes; and very often the very ships sink which those on board think are
most safe. We can only do our best, and after that we must submit to
the will of Heaven."

"What little birds are those flying about so close to the water?"

"Those are Mother Carey's chickens. You seldom see them except in a
storm, or when a storm is coming on."

The birds which William referred to were the stormy petrels.

"Were you ever shipwrecked on a desolate island like Robinson Crusoe?"

"Yes, Master William, I have been shipwrecked; but I never heard of
Robinson Crusoe. So many have been wrecked and undergo