The sailor was committed to the care of Dr. Madden, in the cabin, the distinguished traveller in Africa and the West Indies, and now one of our esteemed fellow-passengers, who skilfully replaced and arranged his nose with stitches and splints, and attended to it during the voyage. The poor fellow continued to swear vengeance on the bears when they should reach the land; but I believe that when they were landed in Liverpool, his nose was not sufficiently secure to favour his design. This unlucky affair had happened some days previous to the gale which I have begun to describe; and with the unsociable and cold reserve with which they were subsequently treated by all on board (visited only at stated periods by their old, but not yet confiding friend Daniel, who brought them their daily allowance), they had, as I have mentioned, become partakers and sufferers with us in the pangs and fears of the hurricane that was sweeping over the vessel and the sea about us. The third day of the gale became the most alarming, and the night of that day closing in upon us, seemed like the gloomy shroud amidst the hurrying winds and the cracking spars, that was to cover us in death. Until this day, though swinging (and now and then jumping) from mountains to mountains of waves, the ship and the elements mingled our fears with amusement. When, however, this day's light was gone, curiosity's feast was finished, and fear was no longer chained under our feet--we had reached the climax of danger, and terror seemed to have seized and reigned through every part of the ship. The bears, in contemplative or other vein, had been mute; but at this gloomy hour, seeming to have lost all patience, added, at first their piteous howlings, and then their horrid growls, to the whistling of the winds; and next, the gnashing of their teeth, and their furious lurches, and bolts, and blows against the sides of their cage, to the cracking of spars and roaring of the tempest! Curiosity again, in desperate minds, was resuscitated, and taking in its insatiable draughts even in the midst of this jarring and discordant medley of darkness--of dashing foam, of cracking masts, and of howlings and growlings and raging of grizly bears; for when the lightnings flashed, men (and even women) were seen crawling and hanging about the deck, as if to see if they could discover the death that was ready with his weapons drawn to destroy them. The captain had twenty times ordered all below, but to no purpose, until in the indiscriminate confusion of his crew and the passengers, in the jet blackness of the gale, when his ship was in danger, and our lives, his trumpet announced that "the bears were on deck!"