case of danger?--though of that I thought less than of that awful sea which lay day and night beneath us; and now, more than ever, there seemed to be but 'a plank' between me and it, now that the captain was no longer between the plank and me. “Then I thought how safe and careless of danger the sailors seemed to be, and that it must be because they knew the ship so well, knew every timber in it, and where it was, and how strong it was; and I determined I would learn too, and asked the captain to tell me all about it; but I found his knowledge of it did not reach much below the cabin floor, and the passengers could tell me little. Then I said to myself, I will go to the forecastle and 'serve up,' for I had found out by this time what that meant; and this, Miss Revere, was really what you would call 'earning my living.' I learned from the crew, and particularly from the same old man who troubled the captain so much with his silent smile, and who would cut little ships, and parts of ships, and put them together for me, so much, that at last I could stand upon the upper deck and know every deck below, and the principal timbers of the frame down to the very keel. I suppose I could not have known all this very well, such a child as I was; but I had learned enough to feel safer and to feel the motion of the waves through the whole ship, up to the planks on which I stood; so that I felt no longer like a loose piece of ballast, rolling helpless about, but as if the ship were a great living thing, and I was its spirit and life. About that time I used to go to the bow of the ship, when great waves were buoying it up, and repeat, with my hair streaming behind my head,-- 'And the waves bound beneath me, as a steed That knows his rider!'-- some lines that I had heard from a passenger; till one day I turned round, and there was the old sailor putting out his cheek, and winking to one of the men; and I ran off as if I had seen a shark, and I believe I never went forward of the cabin after that.” “But, Fanny, how could you remember so well what happened when you were such a mere child as you must have been then? What you say does not sound like a very little child,” said Effie.