Towards evening the breeze sprang up briskly, and away we went, the ship heading W.N.W., as the captain said he wanted to make the northern passage. Next morning we were in a rather rough sea, and a gale of wind blowing. One of the yards was broken with the force of the wind, and the sail and broken yard dangled about the rigging for a considerable time before the sail could be hauled in and the wreckage cleared up. We had several days of bad weather, and one morning when I got up I found the ship heading East. I naturally concluded that we were returning, but the captain said that he had only turned the ship about to enable the men to stop a leak in her bows. The carpenter afterwards told me that the water came in there like a river during the night. Thus we went on through variable weather until at last we sighted two huge icebergs, and then Newfoundland, when the captain informed me that he intended now to coast up to New York. We got out of sight of land occasionally, and one day, after the captain had taken his observations and worked out the ship's position, he called my attention to the chart, and observed that he intended to sail between an island and the mainland, but as the Channel was subject to strong and variable currents, it was a rather dangerous experiment. Being in such a leaky ship, I thought he wanted to hug the land as much as possible, which I considered a very wise and safe proceeding; but he had ulterior objects in view, which the sequel will reveal. On the night of the 31st of May, after a long yarn from the captain about how he was once wrecked on an iceberg, I turned in with a feeling of perfect safety, for the sea was calm, the night clear, and the wind fair and free; but about daylight next morning I was awoke with a shock, a sudden tramping on deck, and the mate shouting down the companion stairs, "Captain, the ship's ashore." Both the captain and I rushed on deck just as we jumped out of our berths, but we could not see anything of the land or shore, for we were enveloped in a thick fog. We heard the breakers and felt the thud of the waves as they broke upon the ship, but whether we had struck on a rock or grounded on a sandy beach we could not then ascertain. The captain ordered the sails to be "slewed back" and a hawser to be thrown astern, but all efforts to get the ship off were in vain, for with every wave the ship forged more and more on to the shore.