Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. IVarious
History
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. VI, November 1850, Vol. I
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
[From Dickens's Household Words.]
ATLANTIC WAVES.
One brisk March morning, in the year 1848, the brave Steam-Ship Hibernia
rolled about in the most intoxicated fashion on the broad Atlantic, in
north latitude fifty-one, and west longitude thirty-eight, fifty--the
wind blowing a hard gale from the west-southwest. To most of the
passengers the grandeur of the waters was a mockery, the fine bearing of
the ship only a delusion and a snare. Every thing was made tight on
deck; if any passenger had left a toothpick on one of the seats, he
would assuredly have found it lashed to a near railing. Rope was coiled
about every imaginable item; and water dripped from every spar of the
gallant vessel. Now it seemed as though she were traveling along through
a brilliant gallery, flanked on either side by glittering walls of
water; now she climbed one of the crested walls, and an abyss dark and
terrible as the famous Maelstrom, which can't be found any where, yawned
to receive her. The snorts of the engine seemed to defy the angry
waters; and occasionally when a monster wave coiled about the ship, and
thundered against her, she staggered for a moment, only to renew the
battle with fresh energy.
The cooks and stewards went placidly through their several daily
avocations on board this rolling, fighting, shaking craft. If they had
been Belgravian servants, or club-house waiters, they could not have
performed their duties with more profound unconcern. Their coolness
appeared nothing less than heroic to the poor tumbled heaps of clothes
with human beings inside, who were scattered about the cabins below. An
unhappy wight, who had never before been five miles from Boston, was
anxiously inquiring of the chief steward the precise time in the course
of that evening that the vessel might be expected to founder; while
another steward, with provoking pertinacity, was asking how many would
dine in the saloon at six, with the same business-like unconcern, as if
the ship were gliding along on glass. So tremendous was the tossing, so
extreme the apparent uncertainty of any event except a watery terminus
to all expectation, that this sort of coolness appeared almost wicked.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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