“Well the storm increased, and we kept a reefin’; for you see I used to be ’bout as much of a sailor as any on ’em, and in a storm there warn’t much to be cooked till ’twas over. And I quit the caboose, and was in the riggin’ and all round the sap works till it abated. While we was a takin’ a double reef on the main sail of the mizzen mast, there was a boy by the name of Henry Thomson, the captain’s boy, who went up aloft with an old sailor, to larn to take a reef-plat, and by misfortune, one of the foot-ropes gin way, and the little feller _fell_ and struck on the quarter-deck railin’, and left part of his brains there, and his body went overboard; and we was agoin’ so fast, we couldn’t ’bout and get him, and we had to leave the poor feller to find companions in the deep. _Oh! he was a noble boy_ and I felt so arter it, that I always thought of this varse of an old sailor song.
‘Days, months, years, and ages, shall circle away, And still the vast waters above thee shall roll, Earth loses thy pattern, for ever and aye, Oh! sailor boy! sailor boy! peace to thy soul.’
“Well we sailed on, and the storm increased till midnight; and oh! how the ocean did look! It seemed as though it was all a blaze of fire, and the ship couldn’t keep still one second. She pitched and tumbled about like a drunken man, and yit every thing held as strong as iron; and so ’bout one o’clock at night, the storm passed off ’bout as quick as it had come, and as soon as any light appeared in the heavens, the captain says, ‘cheer up boys! the storm is agoin’ over and all hands to _bunk_, only the watch.’
“In the mornin’ it was as clear and pleasant as clear could be, only the sea was dreadful rough; for you know it takes the sea a good while to git calm arter a storm; but we gits breakfast and she grows kind’a calmish, and then the captain comes on deck and tells one of the hands to go and git a canvass sack and sow it up, and put a stick in it, and a cannon ball at each end; and then he orders a plank lashed to the side of the ship, with one end slantin’ down to the water, and calls ‘all hands ‘tention,’ and then asks, ‘is there any body aboard that feels as though he could pray?’ And it was as still as death, and all looked at one another, and nobody answered; for you see in all that company of ’bout fifty, nobody could pray to his God. And all was awful, for I tell ye what ’tis Domine, it’s a pretty creepy feelin’ gits hold on a body, if they knows that nobody round ’em can pray! ☜