The two first waves were past and gone,

And sinking in her wake;

The hugest still came leaping on,

And hissing like a snake.

Now helm a-lee! for through the midst,

The monster he must take !

Ah, me! it was a dreary mount!

Its base as black as night,

Its top of pale and livid green,

Its crest of awful white,

Like Neptune with a leprosy,

And so it rear'd upright!

With quaking sails the little boat

Climb'd up the foaming heap;

With quaking sails it paused awhile,

At balance on the steep;

Then, rushing down the nether slope,

Plunged with a dizzy sweep!

Look, how a horse, made mad with fear,

Disdains his careful guide;

So now the headlong headstrong boat,

Unmanaged, turns aside,

And straight presents her reeling flank
Against the swelling tide!

The gusty wind assaults the sail;

Her ballast lies a-lee!

The sheet 's to windward taught and stiff!

Oh! the Lively-where is she?

Her capsiz'd keel is in the foam,

The wild gull, sailing overhead,
Three times beheld emerge

The head of that bold mariner,

And then she screamed his dirge!
For he had sunk within his grave,

Lapp'd in a shroud of surge!

The ensuing wave, with horrid foam,

Rushed o'er and covered all,—

The jolly boatman's drowning scream Was smother'd by the squall,

Heaven never heard his cry, nor did The ocean heed his caul.

A SAILOR'S APOLOGY FOR BOW-LEGS.

THERE's some is born with their straight legs by natur-
And some is born with bow-legs from the first-
And some that should have grow'd a good deal straighter,

But they were badly nurs'd,

And set, you see, like Bacchus, with their

Astride of casks and kegs:

I've got myself a sort of bow to larboard,

And starboard,

pegs

And this is what it was that warp'd my legs.—

'Twas all along of Poll, as I may say,

That foul'd my cable when I ought to slip;

But on the tenth of May,

When I gets under weigh,

Down there in Hartfordshire, to join my ship,

I sees the mail

Get under sail,

The only one there was to make the trip.

Well I gives chase,

But as she run

Two knots to one,

There warn't no use in keeping on the race!

Well-casting round about, what next to try on,
And how to spin,

I spies an ensign with a Bloody Lion,
And bears away to leeward for the inn,

Beats round the gable,

And fetches up before the coach-horse stable :

Well-there they stand, four kickers in a row,

And so

I just makes free to cut a brown'un's cable.

But riding isn't in a seaman's natur—

So I whips out a toughish end of yarn,
And gets a kind of sort of a land-waiter

To splice me, heel to heel,

Under the she-mare's keel,

And off I goes, and leaves the inn a-starn!