. . .herefore, there is a prospect of our being obliged to swim for our lives presently, I should like to know it.”

“Oh, hang it all, man, it surely is not nearly so bad as that, is it?” demanded the mate, as he spread the chart out on the table.

“Oh, isn’t it?” retorted Gascoigne, another midshipman, who had just come below in time to hear the tail-end of my remark and Maxwell’s reply to it. “It is evident that you have not been on deck within the last hour, or you wouldn’t say that. Why, man alive, if you would just pull yourself together enough to become conscious of the antics of the hooker you would understand that she is being driven as no ship ought to be driven without good and sufficient cause. There,”—as the frigate plunged dizzily, rolling at the same moment almost over on her beam-ends and quivering violently throughout her whole fabric at the shock of the sea that had struck her, while plates, pan. . . Read More