A RACE AGAINST DEATH.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XVII, Issue 5409, 19 February 1886, Page 3

A RACE AGAINST DEATH.

Perhaps I had slept an hour, possibly not so long, whin I woke up choking with salt wafer and slushy ice-paste—a wild struggle, the flinging up of arms, and then the Spike-charged water rushed from my head while I gasped for life, the wave poured along the passage into the saloon, breaking in doors, tossing the skipper's harmonium like an orange from end to end until the side parted, and the keys floated loosely among other waste. I made up a portion of that drift-waste as I pitched aimlessly about, and mixed with the mashhed potatoes, and dissolving flour, or watched other potatoes, not yet mashed, careering along the tables like billiardballs, while plates,cruet-stands, salt cellars, and wine-glasses, possessed of animation, rushed recklessly to destruction. As I saw all this, and then turned to where the swarthy Aberdonian skipper rolled down the companion steps, squinting horribly at the severed key-board and floating pieces of his pet instrument and friend of lonely sea hours, I felt the drowning of the galley fires was not the last stroke of sullen Fate. "Pick up the bits, lads," he groaned wearily—'* and you, painter chap, come on deck if you want to see a wave." This title referred to me, and as the planks were becoming somewhat firmer under foot, I groped the best of my way after the skipper to where three seamen were clinging to, rather than controlling the.wheel. Behind them roared a dense black precipice of solid water, beetling cliffs which rose far over our heads, seeming to rise over the top of the mainmast, straight as a wall, with a coping at the head, rushing after us like a Scotch express, growing every instant bigger, bending every instant farther, casting its great shadow—the dark shadow of death —along the poop, main deck, and portion of the forecastle, leaving only the straining sheets and bulging sails at the bow glittering like three flakes of snow in the ghastly'suoshine. We were " head reaching," running a stern face against Death. All hopes rested in those two harrow strips o.E swollen, shadow-darkened canvas on our fore-top and main-top sail yards, with the three shining ribbons at the bow. If these split, farewell to life and England, for thousands of tons will fall and crush us to atoms in one instant, without leaving a whole plank to tell the fate of the Christiania in that pitiless Antartic Ocean, Sliding gradually down the sides of that black mountain, we raced over it, while it galloped madly under us, a mountain smooth as glass, or fused asphalte from its own velocity, with the surge steadfast upon its breast, and the ice-lurapa aud spike-ends pointing steadfastly towards the base, each lump and foam-curd reflected like our weather-worn hull within the darkness down to the gulf before us— that gulf of boiling, whirling spume.— Casselh Magazine for December.