"I thought how it would be when I saw the nightcap on the top of the Horn," muttered old Ben Yool. "We shall have a sneezer before we have done with it, and it may be this day month won't see us round the Cape." Old Ben's prognostications were not very pleasant, for we were anxious to be round the Cape among the wonders we expected to behold in the Pacific. Scarcely was the order given, than the crew were in the rigging. Top-gallant-sails were quickly stowed, three reefs were taken in the topsails, and the courses were brailed up and furled. This was done not a moment too soon: the mighty seas came rolling up mountains beyond mountains, with wide valleys between them, into whose depths the ship plunged down from each watery height as it came under her, seeming as if she could never rise again. Still once more she was lifted upwards among showers of spray, which flew off from the white-crested seas, deluging us fore and aft. Overhead the wild scud flew fast, the stern Cape looked more solitary and grand, and the sea-fowl with discordant shrieks flew round and round, closing in the circles they were forming till they almost touched our masts. The ship struggled bravely onward on the starboard-tack, rapidly increasing her distance from the land, but making very little way to the westward. More than once I held my breath and clenched my teeth, as I felt the ship sending forward, and saw the wide, deep valley into which she was plunging, and the long, huge, watery height rolling on towards us, and looking as if it must overwhelm us. And then, when having, by a miracle it seemed, escaped the threatened danger, to see another valley just as deep and wide, and another mountain just as big--and to know that though we might rush ever so fast onward, we should find valley after valley just as deep, and mountain after mountain just as big for days and days, or weeks to come, perhaps; when, too, I heard the howling and whistling of the wind, and the creaking and complaining of the timbers and bulkheads, and the roar and dash of the seas,--I own that I could not help wishing that my feet were planted on some firm ground, and that I were enjoying the wild scene from a distance. "O Jerry, where are we going to?" I exclaimed, when we first met the full swell of the Pacific. "Going? why, to the west coast of South America, and to Robinson Crusoe's Island, and to all sorts of wild places," he answered, laughing. "We have rather a rough road before us, as you say; but never mind, Harry, you'll soon get accustomed to it, and a little bumping is good for the digestion, they say." Jerry was right; in a very short time I was as much at home as any one in a gale.