Page:The ocean and its wonders.djvu/111

 upon the shore by the swelling surges of the sea, which in some places rolled for three or four miles upon the land. This tempest lasted for three hours."

The China seas are the most frequently visited by severe tempests, or typhoons; yet of all vessels, the Chinese junks, as they are called, seem to be least adapted by their build for encountering such storms.

A terrible hurricane burst upon the China seas in the month of January 1837, as we learn from the "United Service Journal" of that year. An English vessel was exposed to it. The sea, rising in mountains around and over the ship's sides, hurled her rapidly on her passage homeward, when suddenly a wreck was discovered to the westward. The order to shorten sail was given, and promptly obeyed; and when they neared the wreck they found her to be a Chinese junk without mast or rudder—a helpless log on the breast of that boiling sea.

There were many Chinamen on deck vehemently imploring assistance. The exhibition of their joy on beholding the approach of the stranger was of the wildest and most extravagant nature; but it was doomed to be suddenly turned to despair, as the violence of the storm drove the ship past the wreck. It became necessary to put her on the other tack, a manœuvre which the poor creatures construed into abandonment, and the air rang with the most agonizing shrieks of misery. But hope was again