The flames instantly enveloped the ship, and showed the gunners the incendiaries rowing rapidly away.

A hail of shot beat the water into a foam around the boats, but their good fortune still attended them, and they got back without losing a man.
The wind at length calmed sufficiently to encourage our Captain to venture out, and we were soon battling with the rolling waves, far out of sight of land.

For awhile the novelty of the scene fascinated me.

I was at last on the ocean, of which I had heard, read and imagined so much.
The creaking cordage, the straining engine, the plunging ship, the wild waste of tumbling billows, everyone apparently racing to where our tossing bark was struggling to maintain herself, all had an entrancing interest for me, and I tried to recall Byron's sublime apostrophe to the ocean: Thou glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form Classes itself in tempest: in all time, Calm or convulsed-in breeze, or gale, or storm, Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime Dark-heaving--boundless, endless, and sublime-- The image of eternity--the throne Of the invisible; even from out thy slime The monsters of the deep are made; each zone Obey thee: thou goest forth, dread, fathomless, alone, Just then, my reverie was broken by the strong hand of the gruff Captain of, the vessel descending upon my shoulder, and he said: "See, here, youngster! Ain't you the fellow that was put in command of these men ?" I acknowledged such to be the case.
"Well," said the Captain; "I want you to 'tend to your business and straighten them around, so that we can clean off the decks." I turned from the bulwark over which I had been contemplating the vasty deep, and saw the sorriest, most woe-begone lot that the imagination can conceive.

Every mother's son was wretchedly sea-sick.