The Steam-Packet: A Tale of the River and the Ocean — page 316: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE STEAM PACKET, 243 CHAPTER XXII. THE ARRIVAL AT BOULOGNE.—A SINGULAR ADVENTURE AT A SUBURBAN t : BALL, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. Oncz again the Steam Packet ploughs the deep. She is on her way to. Bou- logne-sur-Mer ; she proceeds with the tide at the rate of twelve miles—or knots—an hour. Her engines work nobly—and her square sails are filled. At a distance several sailing vessels, without the auxiliary of paddles, are proceeding at almost an equal speed, their only impulse being the wind. sandth part of the density of the sea, , should supply such a pressure, re- ceiving a velocity enabling it to strike the sails with its particles in such quick succession, as to force the ship forward with such amaz- ing rapidity, and, if the resistance of the water check her escape _be- fore it, to act with sufficient power to blow away the strongest sails, or even tear out the masts. Thus a beneficent nature, in providing an element essential to our existence, by subjecting it to laws requisite for its healthy preservation, and forming anecessary link in the univer- sal economy, has at the same time supplied an ever-active agent, which the ingenuity of man—an emanation of the same great intelligence— has rendered subservient to the noblest of purposes. | Oh! whata splendid triumph for man is the achievement of the sailing ship! But to how many fearful risks are those not exposed who pilot it over the world of waters. Too often the ship yields to the fury ‘of the elements, disappearing for ever, with all her treasures of pro- perty and of life !—oftener, however, the elements become weary with their own violence, and man remains triumphant; the gale abates— the mariners, all alacrity, send up masts and spars, ere now carefully struck and housed on the approach of the tempest ; the reefs are a shaken out, and sail is added to keep the ship from labouring in the still raging waves. - Hope mounts with the ascending canvass ; and now the wind, become less wayward, again permits the mariner to turn the prow towards the haven whither he would arrive; the wings, whose R 2 GComicbooks co Strange that a substance the thou-— im