The sameness of all other seas is not forbidden to this northern one; and except a more constant repetition of squalls and showers of rain, I distinguished the great family likeness. The 8th of August passed pleasantly enough, and for those souls which can absorb the sublimity of water, and soar to the infinity of space, the scene might have seemed wondrous in width and height; but the subsequent day, while sitting below and reading, I heard a tremendous racket on deck, and before I could exactly arrange the different sounds, the main-sail and gaff-topsail came to the deck "with a run;" and for aught I knew to the contrary, but strongly imagined, the gib and foresail followed their example with like expedition.
"We shall go up in the air, like a balloon!" one of the sailors, with a twang of horror in his voice, exclaimed.
"Ay, or swamped!" a second suggested, loudly, with dreadful determination.
"Ay, ay; and the deck's as good as stove in!" growled a third nautical son of a Shuhite.
I threw the book I had been perusing on the cabin table, and hurried towards the staircase; but one of my friends met me at the door, and moving with the same velocity as myself, we came into sharp collision. He rebounded to the right, and I recoiled to the left hand.
"For God's sake, get out of the way," said he, out of breath, and recovering his legs as fast as he could.
"What's the matter?" I asked, with much alarm. "Is the vessel on fire, or what?"
"No;—nothing," replied he, with a wildness of look that foretold anything but nothing. "Here, steward!" he called out at the top of his voice,—"Alfred!—Gandy!—cook!"—dismay expanding the sources of information, and adding loudness to his vociferation—"Where's my gun?"
The steward, Alfred, Gandy, and the cook were busily employed elsewhere, for they made no reply, and my friend soon found, without their assistance, what, at first, confusion of mind had hid from his sight.
Breathless, too, with the flushed face and disordered dress of haste and horror, my other fellow traveller came thundering down the companion, and the thick shooting-boots he commonly wore clattered the importance of his approach.