The result may be imagined. The centrifugal force overturned the sleigh in about the sixteenth part of a second; we were all spilt; Aaron was hurled into a fence-corner; Feeny was scattered along the road behind the sleigh; I, with my crutch and cane strewn all around me, was “chucked” into a snow-bank at the road-side, in an inverted position—fairly buried in the cold snow, and my lonely foot pointing up toward the clouded heavens: and in the midst of this scene of general confusion, our conveyance dashed away through the winter night, and—we had to pick ourselves up and walk home, a distance of two miles and three quarters! [Illustration: “I was chucked into a snow bank and fairly buried in an inverted position, my lonely foot pointing up towards the clouded heavens.”—_On the Darby Road._ _Page_ 292. ] CHAPTER XL. “A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE, AND A HOME ON THE ROLLING DEEP.” FOR some time I had projected, for the spring of 1867, a voyage to San Francisco, _via_ Cape Horn. My friends advised me, if I wanted to go to California, to take a steamer and go by way of the Isthmus; but, for the novelty of the thing, I determined to take passage on a sailing-ship and double Cape Horn, South America, where the Patagonians live, who eat up all the unfortunate sailors driven on their shores. [It’s a pity Cape Horn should ever be _doubled_, for there is too much of it now.] When March came, and it began to get windy and stormy, I went to New York, with the intention of taking passage on the first sailing-vessel that should clear for San Francisco. My friends again gave me a little wholesome advice, and endeavored to dissuade me from attempting the voyage till after the stormy season, but I replied that I didn’t mind seeing a storm at sea, that, in fact, I rather desired it: so, I went. Some of the merchants, shipowners and underwriters of New York, have occasion to remember the clipper-ship BREWSTER, which sailed from New York for San Francisco, on the fourteenth of March, 1867, with a fresh north-west wind and under good auspices, generally. I, John Smith, was that ship’s only passenger. She was not a passenger ship; but I was allowed to take passage on her, because I wanted to go round Cape Horn. Captain Collins, the master of the vessel, asked me whether I thought I could stand up on my crutch, when the ship should come to be tossed about on a rough sea: I replied that I didn’t know about that, but that I was quite skillful at falling down. As before hinted, we sailed on the fourteenth of March; and as a powerful little tug towed us out of the harbor, past Forts Richmond, Lafayette and Hamilton, and I looked back and saw Trinity Church steeple fading from view, I pondered on the long voyage of four or five months before me, and wondered when, if ever, I should see New York and the Atlantic coast again.