received, executes it with quickness.  An intruding sea has driven the look-out from the knight-heads to a post at the funnel, where, near the foremast, he clings with tenacious grip.  Near him is the first officer, a veteran seaman, who has seen some twenty years’ service, receiving orders from the captain, who stands at the weather quarter.  Noiselessly the men proceed to execute their duties.  There is not that bustle nor display of seamanship, in preparing a steamer for encountering a gale, so necessary in a sailing-ship; and all, save the angry elements, move cautiously on.  The engineer, in obedience to the captain’s orders, has slowed his engines.  The ship can make but little headway against the fierce sea; but still, obedient to her command, it is thought better to maintain power just sufficient to keep her head to the sea.  The captain says it is necessary, as well to ease her working as not to strain her machinery.  He is supposed the better judge, and to his counsel all give ear.  Now and then a more resolute passenger shoots from no one knows where, holds struggling by the jerking shroud, and, wrapt in his storm cloak, his amazed eyes, watching the scudding elements overhead, peer out upon the raging sea:  then he mutters, “What an awful sight! how madly grand with briny light!” How sublimely terrific are the elements here combined to wage war against the craft he thought safe from their thunders!  She is but a pigmy in their devouring sweep, a feeble prey at their mercy.  The starboard wheel rumbles as it turns far out of water; the larboard is buried in a deep sea the ship careens into.  Through the fierce drear he sees the black funnel vomiting its fiery vapour high aloft; he hears the chain braces strain and creak in its support; he is jerked from his grasp, becomes alarmed for his safety, and suddenly disappears.  In the cabin he tells his fellow voyagers how the storm rages fearfully:  but it needed not his word to confirm the fact:  the sudden lurching, creaking of panel-work, swinging to and fro of lamps, sliding from larboard to starboard of furniture, the thumping of the sea against the ship’s sides, prostrate passengers made helpless by sea sickness, uncouched and distributed about the floor, moaning females, making those not ill sick with their wailings, timid passengers in piteous accents making their lamentations in state rooms, the half frightened waiter struggling timidly along, and the wind’s mournful music as it plays through the shrouds, tell the tale but too forcibly.  Hope, fear, and prayer, mingle in curious discord on board this seemingly forlorn ship on an angry sea.  Franconia lies prostrate in her narrow berth, now bracing against the panels, then startled by an angry sea striking at her pillow, like death with his warning mallet announcing, “but sixteen inches separate us!”