I had seen my full share of tempests. I had read my full share of descriptions of them; and I was prepared to expect anything and everything from their fury and from their power. But nothing that I had either seen or read, had prepared me for the effects of _this_ tempest, so fierce, so long-enduring, so implacable in its unceasing and uniform fury. When, from time to time, we have a pause, even the slightest mitigation, even a change, however slight, in the Tempest's moods and manifestations, our over-distended senses also relax, recuperate, prepare themselves for the next assault. But in this case, night after night, day after day, for six weary and wearying nights and days, the storm-fiend never winked an eye or spared a blow. Fierce, strong, angry, implacable; still the storm-fiend raged, untiring, and unsparing. On mine honor, see ye! it was something to daunt the boldest, to suggest despair to the most hopeful. No thunder, no crashing combat of the positive and negative storm-clouds, no loud and animating crash of the meeting and contending waves. All around was one dark, leaden, sinister, ominous, and mysterious pall of cloud and mist, all above us one black sky, terminated in the horizon by a sickly and leaden line brooding over a slowly heaving and mighty mass of leaden looking sea;--so slowly and monotonously heaving that one almost wished for the coming storm-blast to rouse them into a fierce fury, less terrible, less oppressive, than their horribly oppressive monotony. No poetry of a great terror could oppress one like this most prosaic and dark monotony. Still, still and ever, came from the deep bosom of the coming storm the same terribly monotonous--"Woe, woe! Alas, alas, alas!" Our abode was close upon the shore. We were no mere spectators of that scene; we were in it, of it, sharers, actors, thrilled actors in that sublime scene. Every now and then the wild sea came within twenty feet of us; at every rush, she made our very hearth stone quiver beneath our feet. Happily, the ever-rising and terrible sou' west wind struck our windows only obliquely, or we should have been drowned as we gazed, so vast was the torrent, nay the deluge, which every blast bore upon its mighty bosom, alike from the clouds above, and from the vexed and upheaving Ocean below. In haste, and with no small difficulty, we fastened the shutters, and lighted lamps, that we might at least look coming fate in the face. In those apartments which looked out upon the landward, the noise and the perturbation were no jot or tittle inferior. I wrote on, curious to ascertain whether this wild outburst of nature could in reality oppress and fetter a free intellect, and I thus kept my intellect active, agile, cool, thoroughly in self-command. I wrote, I noted, I compared, I drew mine own conclusions. At length, worn out solely by fatigue, and abstinence, and the want of "Tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep,"