out, and everything was in readiness.  I shouted the order to “let run,” and down both our anchors went, at the same instant, in twenty-two fathoms’ water.  The ship took cable at a fearful rate; but Marble and Diogenes being at one bower, and Neb and I at the other, we succeeded in snubbing her, with something like twenty fathoms within the hawse-holes.  There was a minute, when I thought the old bark would get away from us; and when, by desperate efforts, we did succeed in checking the mass, it seemed as if she would shake the windlass out of her.  No time was lost in stoppering the cables, and in rolling up the main-top-sail.

Michael and his companions now came to wish us good luck, get the guineas, and to take their leave.  The sea was already so rough that the only mode that remained of getting into their boat was by dropping from the end of the spanker boom.  I endeavoured to persuade two or three of these fellows to stick by the ship, but in vain.  They were all married, and they had a certain protection against impressment in their present manner of life; whereas, should they be found at large, some man-of-war would probably pick them up; and Michael’s tales of the past had not given them any great zest for the sort of life he described.

When these Irish fishermen left us, and ran in-shore, we were thrown again altogether on our own resources.  I had explained to Michael our want of hands, however, attributing it to accidents and impressments, and he thought he could persuade four or five young fellows to come off, as soon as the gale abated, on condition we would take them to America, after discharging at Hamburg.  These were to be mere peasants, it is true, for seamen were scarce in that part of the world; but they would be better than nothing.  Half a dozen athletic young Irishmen would relieve us seamen from a vast deal of the heavy, lugging work of the ship, and leave us strength and spirits to do that which unavoidably fell to our share.  With the understanding that he was to receive, himself, a guinea a-head for each sound man thus brought us, we parted from old Michael, who probably has never piloted a ship since, as I strongly suspect he had never done before.

Chapter XXI.

  “The power of God is everywhere,
  Pervades all space and time: 
  The power of God can still the air,
  And rules in every clime;—­
  Then bow the heart, and bend the knee,
  And worship o’er both land and sea.”

  Duo.

I never knew precisely the point on the coast of Ireland where we anchored.  It was somewhere between Strangford and Dundrum Bay; though the name of the head-land which gave us a sort of protection, I did not learn.  In this part of the island, the coast trends north and south, generally; though at the place where we anchored, its direction was nearly from north-north-east to south-south-west,—­which, in the early