hannel to the Atlantic.

First, beating to the westward with the ebb tide, so as to give Great
Orme's Head a wide berth, and then making a short board south when she
had cleared Anglesey; what with the currents and the thick fog,
accompanied with driving rain, that she met on nearing the Welsh coast,
she nearly came to grief on the Skerries, the water shoaling rapidly on
the lead being hove, shortly before the bright fixed light showing above
the red on the Platters rocks loomed close in on the starboard bow.
This made it a case of 'bout ship at once, Captain Snaggs thenceforth
hugging the Irish side of the channel way and keeping it well on board
on the port tack; and so on this second morning after leaving Liverpool,
the ship was some six miles south of the Tuskar Light, with a
forty-fathom bottom under her and the wind still to the southward and
westward, right ahead of her true course, but shifting and veering from
one point to another, and with a sudden sharp squall coming every now
and then, by way of a change, to increase the labour of the men, already
pretty well worn out by forty-eight hours tacking to and fro in the
captain's endeavours to beat to windward in the face of the foul
weather.

As the _Denver City_, too, reached the more open seaway, the water got
rougher, a northern stream setting up the Irish Sea from Scilly meeting
the incoming tide round Carnsore Point, and causing a nasty chopping
sea; which, save in the sullen green hollows of the waves, was dead and
lead-coloured as far as the eye could reach--as leaden, indeed, as the
heavy grey sky overhead, where some fleecy floating clouds of lighter
wrack, rapidly drifting across the darker background that lined the
horizon all round, made the latter of a deeper tone by contrast, besides
acting as the _avant courier_ of a fresh squall--the wind just then
tearing and shrieking through the rigging in short angry gusts and then
sighing as it wailed away to leeward, like the spirit of some lost
mariner chaunting the requiem of those drowned in the remorseless deep!

When the port watch had gone below at `eight bells,' as mentioned
before, to have their dinner, the weather had looked a little brighter,
a small patch of blue sky, not quite as big as the Dutchman's proverbial
pair of breeches, showing right overhead at the zenith as the ship's
bell struck the midday hour, giving a slight promise of better things to
come; and so, as Captain Snaggs had been tr