No man can find himself over the abysses, the floor of which is paved with wrecks and white with the bones of the shrieking myriads of human beings whom the waves have swallowed up, without some thought of the dread possibilities hanging over his fate.  There is only one way to get rid of them:  that which an old sea-captain mentioned to me, namely, to keep one’s self under opiates until he wakes up in the harbor where he is bound.  I did not take this as serious advice, but its meaning is that one who has all his senses about him cannot help being anxious.  My old friend, whose beard had been shaken in many a tempest, knew too well that there is cause enough for anxiety.

What does the reader suppose was the source of the most ominous thought which forced itself upon my mind, as I walked the decks of the mighty vessel?  Not the sound of the rushing winds, nor the sight of the foam-crested billows; not the sense of the awful imprisoned force which was wrestling in the depths below me.  The ship is made to struggle with the elements, and the giant has been tamed to obedience, and is manacled in bonds which an earthquake would hardly rend asunder.  No!  It was the sight of the boats hanging along at the sides of the deck,—­the boats, always suggesting the fearful possibility that before another day dawns one may be tossing about in the watery Sahara, shelterless, fireless, almost foodless, with a fate before him he dares not contemplate.  No doubt we should feel worse without the boats; still they are dreadful tell-tales.  To all who remember Gericault’s Wreck of the Medusa,—­and those who have seen it do not forget it,—­the picture the mind draws is one it shudders at.  To be sure, the poor wretches in the painting were on a raft, but to think of fifty people in one of these open boats!  Let us go down into the cabin, where at least we shall not see them.

The first morning at sea revealed the mystery of the little round tin box.  The process of shaving, never a delightful one, is a very unpleasant and awkward piece of business when the floor on which one stands, the glass in which he looks, and he himself are all describing those complex curves which make cycles and epicycles seem like simplicity itself.  The little box contained a reaping machine, which gathered the capillary harvest of the past twenty-four hours with a thoroughness, a rapidity, a security, and a facility which were a surprise, almost a revelation.  The idea of a guarded cutting edge is an old one; I remember the “Plantagenet” razor, so called, with the comb-like row of blunt teeth, leaving just enough of the edge free to do its work.  But this little affair had a blade only an inch and a half long by three quarters of an inch wide.  It had a long slender handle, which took apart for packing, and was put together with the greatest ease.  It was, in short, a lawn-mower for the masculine growth of which the proprietor wishes to rid his countenance.