The tempest which was now shrieking and howling in its fury bore no resemblance to any thing disagreeable enough by which a comparison could be made, except falling clods upon the coffin of an only friend and protector, or the click of a pistol that sends a soul into eternity. In imagination I could hear the gnashing teeth of fighting fiends, in reality the roaring thunders, threatening with their stunning proximity, while torrents of water were descending--thus bringing a yawning abyss before us under circumstances of appalling nearness, when the sea, in its fiercest moments of fury, has often plunged the ship and mariners into an open chasm, with cold, cruel waves for a winding-sheet, while the winds sung a requiem. It was an epoch in the history of my life, when I felt my grasp upon tangible substance weakening, and at any moment that I might be hurled into that shoreless, fathomless depth, from whose uncertain soundings and unexplored domains there would be no return. As the wind increased the sea commenced washing over decks, which movement would not be mistaken, for purling streams meandering through green lawns and "flowery meads." The pantry contributed its share to the general din--the plates all falling down, the tumblers, cups, and bowls, never ceasing to roll over--at the same instant a big wave coming in washed the tinware from the galley, while the cook-stove, with its legs nailed fast to the floor, remained a mute spectator. The chairs gathered in groups and skated across the oil-cloth at each lurch of the vessel. Nothing revealed those terrible troughs in the sea before us but the vivid lightning, which also enabled the sailors to see the spars, and keep a portion of the sails reefed. The deep waters resembled liquid mountains piled in pyramidal forms, dissolving like dew with every wind that passed, at which we were not dismayed while the vessel could leap over them. Meanwhile there came a heavy sea that shipped down the gangway and commenced washing out the cabin--at the same instant a gust extinguished the binnacle lamp. As a precautionary movement, to keep the mast from being jerked out, the foresheet was secured. The beating billows, rattling chains, and inky darkness, combined, were suggestive of a passage contained in the Epistle of Jude, where the fallen spirits are spoken of as "reserved in everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day." The hour of midnight, when the clock shall have struck twelve, is looked for with much solicitude during a gale. How the men worked! How the pumps groaned! Our vessel was only a toy with which the waves were playing as a pastime, whose angry waves we were willing to appease by a promise that we would come no more, if only spared from a dive beneath their surface. Storms and adversity are both great levelers in life. How all social barriers of distinction vanish as we feel our dependence upon the roughest tar that