The works of Edgar Allan Poe; newly collected and edited, with a memoir, critical introductions, and notes, by Edmund Clarence Stedman and George Edward Woodberry; the illustrations by Albert Edward Sterner.

MS. FOUND IN A BOTTLE

booms, and rolling every moment her top-gallant yardarms into the most appalling hell of water which it
can enter into the mind of man to imagine. I have
just left the deck, where I find it impossible to maintain a-footing, although the crew seem to experience
little inconvenience. It appears to me a miracle of
miracles that our enormous bulk is not swallowed up
at once and forever. We are surely doomed to hover
continually upon the brink of eternity, without taking
a final plunge into the abyss. From billows a thousand times more stupendous than any I have ever seen,
we glide away with the facility of the arrowy sea-gull;
and the colossal waters rear their heads above us like
demons of the deep, but like demons confined to
simple threats, and forbidden to destroy. I am led to
attribute these frequent escapes to the only natural
cause which can account for such effect. I must suppose the ship to be within the influence of some strong
current, or impetuous under-tow.
I have seen the captain face to face, and in his own
cabin —but, as I expected, he paid me no attention.
Although in his appearance there is, to a casual
observer, nothing which might bespeak him more or
less than man, still, a feeling of irrepressible reverence
and awe mingled with the sensation of wonder with
which I regarded him. In stature, he is nearly my
own height; that is, about five feet eight inches. He
is of a well-knit and compact frame of body, neithei
robust nor remarkably otherwise. But it is the singularity of the expression which reigns upon the face -
it is the intense, the wonderful, the thrilling evidence
of old age so utter, so extreme, which excites within
my spirit a sense- a sentiment ineffable. His fore233