heavy sails, seeming to bid defiance to all restraint, shaking the ship to her centre; but art and strength prevailed, and gradually the canvas was distended, and, as it filled, was drawn down to its usual place by the power of a hundred men. The vessel yielded to this immense addition of force, and bowed before it like a reed bending to a breeze. But the success of the measure was announced by a joyful cry from the stranger, that seemed to burst from his inmost soul.

"She feels it! she springs her luff!* Observe," he said, "the light opens from the hom-moc already. If she will only bear her canvas we shall go clear."

A report like that of a cannon interrupted his exclamation, and something resembling a white cloud was seen drifting before the wind from the head of the ship, till it was driven into the gloom far to leeward.

""Tis the jib, blown from the bolt-ropes," said the commander of the frigate. "This is no time to spread light duck; but the main-sail may stand it yet."

"The sail would laugh at a tornado," returned the lieutenant; "but that mast springs like a piece of steel."

66

Silence, all!" cried the pilot. "Now, gentlemen, we shall soon know our fate. Let her luff; luff you can."

This warning effectually closed all discourse; and the hardy mariners, knowing that they had already done all in the power of man to insure their safety, stood in breathless anxiety awaiting the result. At a short distance ahead of them the whole ocean was white with foam, and the waves, instead of rolling on in regular succession, appeared to be tossing about in mad gambols. A single streak of dark billows, not half a cable's length in width, could be discerned running into this chaos of water; but it was soon lost to the eye, amid the confusion of the disturbed element. Along this narrow path the vessel moved more heavily than before, being brought so near the wind as to keep her sails touching. The pilot silently proceeded to the wheel, and with his

To luff is to turn the ship nearer towards the direction of the wind, or to sail nearer the wind. A ship is said to spring her luff when she yields to the helm by sailing nearer the wind.

own hands he undertook the steerage of the ship. No noise proceeded from the frigate to interrupt the horrid tumult of the ocean, and she entered the channel among the breakers with the silence of a desperate calmness. Twenty times, as the foam rolled away to leeward, the crew were on the eve of uttering their joy, as they supposed the vessel past the danger; but breaker after breaker would still rise before them, following each other into the general mass, to check their exultation. Occasionally the fluttering of the sails would be heard; and when the looks of the startled seamen were turned to the wheel, they beheld the stranger grasping its spokes, with his quick eye glancing from the water to the canvas. At length the ship reached a point where she appeared to be rushing directly into the jaws of destruction, when suddenly her course was changed, and her head receded rapidly from the wind. At the same instant the voice of the pilot was heard shouting,—

"Square away the yards!—in main-sail!"

A general burst from the crew echoed, "Square away the yards!" and quick as thought the frigate was seen gliding along the channel before the wind. The eye had hardly time to dwell on the foam, which seemed like clouds driving in the heavens, and directly the gallant vessel issued from her perils, and rose and fell on the heavy waves of the open sea.

COOPER.

DANGERS OF THE DEEP.

"Tis pleasant by the cheerful hearth to hear
Of tempests, and the dangers of the deep,
And pause at times, and feel that we are safe;
Then listen to the perilous tale again,
And, with an eager and suspended soul,
Woo terror to delight us. But to hear
The roaring of the raging elements;
To know all human skill, all human strength,
Avail not; to look around, and only see

The mountain-wave incumbent, with its weight
Of bursting waters, o'er the reeling bark ;-
Ah, me! this is indeed a dreadful thing;
And he who hath endured the horror once
Of such an hour, doth never hear the storm
Howl round his home but he remembers it,
And thinks upon the suffering mariner.

HYMN TO THE NORTH STAR.

THE sad and solemn Night

Has yet her multitude of cheerful fires ;—

The glorious hosts of light

Walk the dark hemisphere till she retires: All through her silent watches, gliding slow,

SOUTHEY.

Her constellations come, and climb the heavens, and go.

Day, too, hath many a star

To grace his gorgeous reign, as bright as they;Through the blue fields afar,

Unseen, they follow in his flaming way:

Many a bright lingerer, as the eve grows dim,
Tells what a radiant troop arose and set with him.

And thou dost see them rise,

Star of the Pole! and thou dost see them set:
Alone in thy cold skies,

Thou keep'st thine old, unmoving station yet,
Nor join'st the dances of that glittering train,
Nor dipp'st thy virgin orb in the blue western main.

There, at morn's rosy birth,

Thou lookest meekly through the kindling air; And eve, that round the earth

Chases the day, beholds thee watching there; There noontide finds thee, and the hour that calls

The shapes of Polar flame to scale heaven's azure walls.

Alike beneath thine eye

The deeds of darkness and of light are done ;—

High toward the star-lit sky

Towns blaze-the smoke of battle blots the sun

The night-storm on a thousand hills is loud

And the strong wind of day doth mingle sea and cloud.

On thine unaltering blaze

The half-wrecked mariner, his compass lost,
Fixes his steady gaze,

And steers, undoubting, to the friendly coast:

And they who stray in perilous wastes by night,

Are glad when thou dost shine to guide their footsteps right.

And, therefore, bards of old,

Sages, and hermits of the solemn wood,

Did in thy beams behold

A beauteous type of that unchanging good,

That bright, eternal beacon, by whose ray

The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.

BRYANT.

FROM THE NORTH POLE STAR TO THE SUN.

THE North Pole Star, or, as it is called, Polaris, is so far from the Earth, that if we were to set down the distance in miles, the figures would convey no meaning to our minds. A cannon ball would take more than seventeen millions of years to make the journey! But cannon balls, though considered swift messengers in war, creep along as slowly as snails, when placed beside the messengers which the Almighty employs to carry news from one province of his vast empire to the other. Light is one of these swift-footed servants of God. A ball flying through the air at its utmost speed, travels over less than three furlongs in a second; but a ray of light, issuing from sun or star, sends its flash in that time a distance of

192,000 miles! But even this swift messenger has a long journey to make before reaching our eyes from the far off Pole-star. Winging its way without stopping for an instant, it is thirty-one years on the road. And when it does arrive, it brings the news to our Earth that, thirty-one years before, there was a star shining where we see Polaris; but whether that star be shining still, it cannot say. Other rays, that are arriving every instant, bring later news; but not one reaches our eyes sooner than thirty-one years from the time it set out.

Among other news brought by this swift-footed servant of the King of Heaven is this, also, that the Pole-star is a sun, as big, it may be, and as glorious as our own. And it tells us, further, that between that distant sun and our Earth there is not air like what we breathe, but a something that we call ether, of a thinness and purity unknown to the inhabitants of this world.

If one of these rays of light could be made to reveal all it passed by or through in its journey to our Earth, what a curious chapter should then be written in the history of the heavens! But though it cannot be got to tell the whole story of its journey, there is not much difficulty in imagining a few of the incidents on the road.

On setting out it passes among several dark bodies, called by us planets, to which Polāris is the great source of light and heat, as our Sun is to the Earth and other bodies of the Solar System. They shine by reflecting his light; and they revolve round him as our Earth does round the Sun. The ray brings us no news about these planets, however large or numerous they may be; for their borrowed light is lost in the blaze of the mighty centre of their system. A spectator standing on one of them sees, both by day and night, sights not unlike those that meet the eyes of man. Filling the whole heavens with his sunny beams, Polaris, though but a twinkling star in our heavens, diffuses light and gladness among the planets that own his power. By night, moons, planets, and fixed stars, differently arranged, it may be, from those that we behold, enlighten the dark heavens. Among the fixed stars shining in the skies of that distant province of the Creator's do