favoured of ocean travellers. How very much do they err who consider the absence of order and method as supplying greater liberty or removing a sense of restraint! Such freedom is galling to me; and in my eyes, the want of punctuality is a want of honest principle; for however people may think themselves authorized to rob God and themselves of their own time, they can plead no right to lay a violent hand on the time and duties of their neighbour. I say it deliberately, that I have been defrauded of hundreds. of pounds, and cruelly deprived of my necessary refreshment in exercise, in sleep, and even in seasonable food, through this disgraceful want of punctuality in others, more than through any cause whatsoever besides. It is also very irritating; for a person who would cheerfully bestow a piece of gold, does not like to be swindled out of a piece of copper; and many an hour have I been ungenerously wronged of, to the excitement of feelings in themselves far from right, when I would gladly have so arranged my work as to bestow upon the robbers thrice the time they made me wantonly sacrifice. To say, "I will come to you on such a day, leaving the person to expect you early, and then, after wasting her day in that uncomfortable, unsettled state of looking out for a guest, which precludes all application to present duties, and to come late in the evening or to accept an invitation to dinner, and either break the engagement or throw the household into confusion by making it wait to appoint a meeting, and fail of keeping your time - all these, and many other effects of this vile habit are exceedingly disgraceful, and wholly opposed to the scriptural rules laid down for the governance of our conduct one to another. I say nothing of the insult put upon the Most High, the daring presumption of breaking in upon the devotions of his worshippers, and involving them in the sin of abstractedness 74 MOUNTAIN WAVES. from the solemn work before them, by entering late into the house of prayer. Such persons may one day find they have a more serious account to render on the score of their contempt of punctuality than they seem willing to believe. But I have run away from my ship; yet not so; for as every thing shines out most by contrast, it was natural to think on the ugly reverse when recalling the beautiful harmony and order of our regulations on board. We were favoured with most delightful weather, fresh and dry, and warm with only one day's hard rain, during which the sea ran mountains,' as the sailors said. I was conducted on deck, just for one minute, that you may be able to say you have seen such a sea,' remarked the gentleman who put a military cloak over me, and led me up the stairs. But who could be satisfied with a momentary sight of anything so stupendously grand! I resisted all efforts to persuade me into retreating again, and it ended in my being lashed to the mizen-mast by my friendly conductor, who declared that his head, the best landsman's head on board, would not stand the giddy scene;, in short, that he should be obliged to report himself sick, and exchange our agreeable society below for the solitude of his berth. Of course I dismissed him, and was left among the mountains, alone, save when a sailor passed me on his duties among the rigging, and gave me a smile of approval; while the man at the wheel seemed to regard me as being under his especial patronage. The tars love one who does not flinch from their own element. Truly, I saw, that day, the works of the Lord and his wonders in the great deep! Imagine yourself in a ship, large among vessels, but a mere cork upon the waters of that mighty main. On every side, turn where you would, a huge mountain of irregular form was rising; dark, smooth, of unbroken surface, but seeming about to burst from overextension. How did you come into that strange valley? how should you get out of it? - how avoid the rush of that -- you were Meanwhile second of time the huge body beside you sank, on its summit, and another came rolling on. the ship would reel, with a slow slanting movement that gradually lowered the tall masts till the yards almost dipped in the brine, and you were either laid back on the frame work behind you, or well nigh suspended, looking down upon the water, over the ship's bulwarks. I soon discovered why my companion had so carefully buckled the leather strap that held me to the mast; certainly I cannot recall the scene with such steadiness of nerve as I beheld it with. Every now and then a small billow would burst upon the vessel's side, sending its liquid treasure across the deck, and more than one ablution of the kind was added to the fresh water drenching bestowed by the clouds. Can you fancy the discomfort of such a situation? Then you were never at sea, or at least you left your imagination ashore; for I defy any person not well inured to it to look on such a scene with so negative a feeling as discomfort; it will excite either terror or delight sufficient to engross the whole mind. I well remember that, when deeply affected by the grandeur of this and other aspects assumed by the majestic main, I found the highest flights of man's sublimity too They would not express, would not chime in with my conceptions; and I was driven to the inspired pages for a commentary on the glorious scene. It was then that the language of Job, of Isaiah, of Habakkuk supplied me with a strain suited to the sublime accompaniment of God's magnificent work. Sunrise I could not witness, because at that hour no lady might appear on deck, and my cabin had not a side window; but sunset, moonlight, starlight, with the various phenomena of ocean's ever-varying appearance, these furnished an endless contemplation with which no 76 FALSE CONFIDENCE. thing could accord but the language of Holy Writ. I did not bring forth my Bible, well knowing the bantering remarks to which it would have exposed me on the score of affectation, but my memory served me equally well in that, as in profane poetry; and many a precious word of warning, exhortation, promise, did I recite, enchanted by the sublimity of what, as to its spiritual meaning, was still an unknown tongue to me. Among these, the thirty-second of Deuteronomy, the fortieth of Isaiah, and other passages full of the gospel, were repeatedly called to mind; and above all, in blowing weather, the forty-sixth Psalm delighted me. You may suppose that I could not wholly forget the fact of being where, in the strictest sense, there was but a step between me and death. The first day of our voyage some one had quoted the expression, there is but a plank between us and eternity;' not with any serious application, but as a fine thought. I do not think that I was ever for a moment unmindful of this; the presence of actual danger was always felt by me; but concerning eternity I had no fears whatever. A general reliance on the boundless mercy of God, a recognition of Christ, as having suffered for our sins, and a degree of self-righteousness that easily threw my sins into the shade, while magnifying my supposed merits, these formed the staff whereon I leaned; and when the most imminent and appalling peril overhung us, so that we expected to be ingulfed in the waves without hope of succour, I looked it boldly in the face, confident in my false hope. Although just then revelling in enjoyments best suited to my natural taste, life had in reality no charms for me. From all that had gilded the sunny hours of youth, I was completely severed, and the world on which I had launched was a wilderness indeed in comparison with the Eden I had left. I would not have made the slightest effort to escape from death in any form, and though I was not senseless enough to prefer an eternity of untried wretched more than I deserved, and had therefore a claim on divine justice; and as I was willing to receive the supposed balance of such debtor and creditor account in the world to come, I was perfectly content to be summoned to my reward. Blessed be God that I was not taken away in that hour of blind willingness! The extreme peril to which I have alluded overtook us when within a short distance of our destination: we were suddenly caught by a tremendous wind from the south, which blew us right in the direction of Cape Sable, one of the most fatal head-lands in those seas. Night closed upon us, and the gale increased; sails were spread, in a desparate hope of shifting the vessel's course, but were instantly torn into ribbands. At one time, for a moment, the rudder broke loose, the tiller-rope giving way under the violent strain upon it; and the next minute the spanker-boom, an immense piece of timber, snapped like a reed. It was an awful scene; on the lee side, the ship lay so low in the water that every thing was afloat in the sleeping cabins; and the poor ladies were screaming over their terrified children, unheeded by the gentlemen, every one of whom was on deck. The captain openly declared we were bound for the bottom, if a very sudden and unlikely change of wind did not take place. In the midst of all this, I was reported missing, and as I had the privilege of being every body's care, because, for the time being, I belonged to nobody, a search was commenced. A young officer found me, at last, so singularly situated that he went and reported me to the captain. I had climbed three tiers of lockers in the state cabin, opened one of the large stern windows, and was leaning out, as far as I could reach, enraptured beyond expression with the terrific grandeur of the scene. The sky above was black as midnight and the storm could make it, overhanging |