We tell thy doom without a sigh, For thou art Freedom's now, and Fame's-- XXVI. A TEMPEST AT SEA. BY JOHN HUGHES.' AFTER a breeze of some sixty hours from the north. and northwest, the wind died away about four o'clock yesterday afternoon. The calm continued until about nine o'clock in the evening. The mercury in the barometer fell, in the meantime, at an extraordinary rate; and the captain predicted that we should encounter a 10 gale from the southeast. I did not hear the prediction, or I should not have gone to bed. The gale came on, however, at about eleven o'clock; not violent at first, but increasing every moment. I slept soundly until after five in the morning, and then awoke with a con-15 fused recollection of a good deal of rolling and thumping through the night, which was occasioned by the dashing of the waves against the ship. There was an unusual trampling and shouting, or rather screaming, on deck, and soon after a crash upon 20 the cabin floor, followed by one of the most unearthly screams I ever heard. The passengers, taking the alarm, sprang from their berths, and without stopping to dress, ran about asking questions without waiting for or receiving any answers. Hurrying on my clothes, I found 2 that the shriek proceeded from the second steward, who had, by a lurch of the ship, been thrown in his sleep from his sofa, some six feet to the cabin floor. By this time I found such of the passengers as could stand, at the doors of the hurricane house, " holding on," and looking out in the utmost consternation. This, I ex- · claimed mentally, is what I wanted, but I did not expect it so soon. It was still quite dark. Four of the sails were already in ribbons. The winds whistled through the cordage; the rain dashed furiously and in torrents; the noise and spray were scarcely less than I found them 10 under the great sheet at Niagara. And in the midst of all this, the captain with his speaking trumpet, the officers, and the sailors, screaming to each other in efforts to be heard, and mingling their oaths and curses with the angry voice of the tempest — this, all this, in the 15 darkness which precedes the dawning of the day, and with the fury of the hurricane, combined to form as much of the terribly sublime as I ever wish to witness concentrated in one scene. The passengers, though silent, were filled with appre-20 hension. What the extent of danger, and how all this would terminate, were questions which arose in my own mind, although unconscious of fear or trepidation. But to such questions there were no answers, for this knowledge resides only with Him who "guides the storm and 25 directs the whirlwind." We had encountered, however, as yet only the commencement of a gale, whose terrors had been heightened by its suddenness, by the darkness, and by the confusion. It continued to blow furiously for twenty-four hours; so that during the whole day I 20 enjoyed a view which, apart from its dangers, would be worth a voyage across the Atlantic. The ship was driven madly through the raging waters, and even when it was impossible to walk the decks without imminent risk of being lifted up and carried away by the winds, the poor sailors were kept aloft, tossing and swinging about the yards and in the tops, clinging by their bodies, feet, and arms, with mysterious tenacity, to the spars, while their hands were em- › ployed in taking in and securing sail. On deck, the officers and men made themselves safe by ropes; but how the gallant fellows aloft kept from being blown out of the rigging was equally a matter of wonder and admiration. However, at about seven o'clock they had taken in what canvas had not been blown away, except the sails by means of which the vessel is kept steady. At nine o'clock the hurricane had acquired its full force. There was now no more work to be done. The ship lay to, and those who had her in charge only remained on: deck to be prepared for whatever disaster might occur. The breakfast hour came and passed, unheeded by most of the passengers; though I found my own appetite quite equal to the spare allowance of a fast day.' 21 By this time the sea was rolling up its tremendous waves; and that I might not lose the grandeur of such a view, I fortified myself against the rain and spray in winter overcoat and cork-soled boots, and, in spite of the fierceness of the gale, planted myself in a position favorable for a survey of all around me, and in safety, so» long as the ship's strong works might hold together. I had often seen paintings of a storm at sea, but here was the original. These imitations are often graphic and faithful, so far as they go. But they are necessarily deficient in accompaniments which painting cannot supply, and are therefore feeble and ineffective. You have upon canvas the ship and the sea, but as they come from the hands of the artist, so they remain. The universal motion of both are thus arrested and made 30 5 stationary. There is no subject in which the pencil of the painter acknowledges more its indebtedness to the imagination than in its attempts to delineate the sea storm. But even could the attempt be successful, so far as the eye is concerned, there would still be wanting the rushing of the hurricane, the groaning of the masts and yards, the quick, shrill rattling of the cordage, and the ponderous dashing of the uplifted deep. All these were numbered among the advantages of my position, as, firmly planted, I opened eyes and ears, heart 10 and soul, to the beautiful frightfulness of the tempest around and the ocean above me. At this time the hurricane was supposed to be at the top of its fury, and it seemed to me quite impossible for winds to blow more violently. Our noble ship had been 15 reduced in the scale of proportion by this sudden transformation of the elements, into dimensions apparently insignificant. She had become a mere boat to be lifted up and dashed down by the caprice3 of wave after wave. The weather, especially along the surface of the sea, 20 was so thick and hazy that you could not see more than a mile in any direction. But within that horizon the spectacle was one of majesty and power. Within that circumference there were mountains and plains, the alternate rising and sinking of which seemed like 25 the action of some volcanic power beneath. You saw immense masses of uplifted waters emerging from the darkness on one side, and rushing and tumbling across the valleys that remained after the passage of their predecessors, until, like them, they rolled away into 30 similar darkness on the other side. These waves were not numerous, nor rapid in their movements; but in massiveness and elevation they were the legitimate offspring of a true tempest. It was their elevation that imparted the beautifully pale and transparent green to the billows, from the summit of which the toppling white foam spilled itself over and came falling down towards you with the dash of a cataract. Not less magnificent than the waves themselves were the varying dimensions of the valleys that remained between them. You would expect to see these ocean plains enjoying, as it were, a moment of repose, but during the hurricane's frenzy this was not the case. Their waters had lost for a moment the onward motion of the billows, but they were far from being at rest. They preserved the green hues and foamy scarfs of the mighty insurgents that had passed over them. 10 The angry aspect that they presented to the eye that gazed, almost vertically, upon their boiling eddies, wheel-15 ing about in swift currents, with surface glowing and hissing as if in contact with heated iron; all this showed that their depths were not unvisited by the tempest, but that its spirit had descended beneath the billows to heave them up presently in all the rushing, convulsive 20 violence of the general commotion. Both mountain and plain of the infuriated waters were covered with the white foam of the water against which the winds first struck, and which, from high points, was lifted up into spray; but in all other places, was hurled along with the 25 intense rapidity of its motion, until the whole prospect, on the lee side of the ship, seemed one field of drifting snow, dashed along furiously to its dark borders by the howling storm. In the mean time our ship gathered herself up into 30 the compactness and buoyancy of a duck-and except the feathers that had been plucked from her wings before she had time to fold her pinions—she rode out of the storm without damage, and in triumph. It was not the |