Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/264

 PASSAGE TO CALAIS. 239

his fair young bride, whose course of united life, so strikingly bright and beautiful, had this stormy pre lude.

&quot;NVc had not proceeded far on the troubled deep, ere the billows broke over us, and opening seams admitted an abundance of petty rills. Our poor little craft seemed the scorn both of sea and sky, tossed up by one, and beaten back by the other. Driven by winds, and gorged with brine, it ran its terrible gauntlet, reel ing and groaning at the stroke of every new surge.

The attitudes of the voyagers defied the pencil s power. There were no couches to fall upon, it being a day -boat, and having but little available space of any kind. One passenger, drenched to the skin, burst into peals of hysterical laughter ; another, the bearer of French despatches, exclaimed, at every fresh ablution, &quot; Sacre Dieu ! &quot; and leaped like a roasted chestnut. I had taken refuge, by permission, below, in a kind of cabin, or rubbish-hole, where was a rickety lounge, cov ered with cast-off garments. Thither ran the sailors, unconscious of a stranger s proximity, to get a drink of brandy, swearing that we should all go to the bottom. Thither came the captain, thrusting into the gaping crevices whatever of a pliant nature he could lay his hand upon. At length, seizing his large cyphering- slate, he drove, with tremendous force, nails through its frame, to oppose the progress of a leak. Yet, amid all our helplessness and peril, did the good Lord deliver us. Praise to His mercy.

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