250

THE YOUTH’S CABINET.

ccetitinniataiatnaaataanca aca acimatapnarepamnmmsens ice ta seit ELL

The bright day is gone—the moon and stars appearing,
With silver light illume the night,
O, come, come away. |
Come, join your prayers with ours; address
Kind Heaven, our peaceful home to bless
With health, hope, happiness.
O, come, come away.

 

Perils of the Whale Fishery.

NE serene evening, in the middle
of August, 1775, Captain War-
rens, the master of a Greenland
whale ship, found himself be-

calmed among an immense number of
icebergs, in about seventy-seven degrees
of north latitude. Onone side and with-
in a mile of his vessel, these were of im-
mense height, and closely wedged to-
gether, and a succession of snow-covered
peaks appeared behind each other as far
as the eye could reach, showing that the
ocean was completely blocked up in that
quarter, and that it had probably been
so for a long period of time. Captain
Warrens did not feel altogether satisfied
‘ with his situation; but, there being no
wind, he could not move one way or the
other, and he therefore kept a strict
watch, knowing that he would be safe
as long as the icebergs continued in their
respective places. About midnight the
wind rose to a gale, accompanied by
thick showers of snow, while a succes-
sion of thundering, grinding, and crash-
ing noises gave fearful evidence that the
ice was in motion.

The vessel received violent shocks
every moment, for the haziness of the
atmosphere prevented those on board
from discovering in what direction the

open water lay, or if there actually was
any at all on either side of them. The
night was spent in tacking as often as
any case of danger happened to present
itself, and in the morning the storm
abated, and Captain Warrens found, to
his great joy, that his ship had not sus-
tained any serious injury. He remarked
with surprise that the accumulated ice-
bergs, which had the preceding evening
formed an impenetrable barrier, had been
separated and disengaged by the wind,
and that in one place a canal of open sea
wound its course among them as far as
the eye could discern.

It was two miles beyond the entrance
of this canal that a ship made its ap-
pearance about noon. ‘The sun shone
brightly at the time, and a gentle breeze
blew from the north. At first some in-
tervening icebergs prevented Captain
Warrens from distinctly seeing anything
but her mast; but he was struck with
the strange manner in which her sails
were disposed, and with the dismantled
aspect of her yards and rigging. She
continued to go before the wind for a
few furlongs, and then, grounding upon
the low icebergs, remained motionless.
Captain Warrens’s curiosity was so much
excited, that he immediately leaped into