GehejmelegationsraadBilleSteenAndersen

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ominous drops came pattering down. Our boatmen covered themselves with brown capuchin-hoods and wrappers, looking like so many friars taking us heretic sinners to another world. We were now rapidly nearing the breakers o f cape Misenum, the storm increasing every moment in fea rfu l violence. In another quarter o f an hour we should, with the aid o f heaven, round the cape and come into the sheltered bay of Baja when lo — a tremendous wave struck our fra il boat and shivered the rudder! — The boat was unmanageable, the sailflew round, flapping with the report o f pistol-shots in the wind and every wave cast us nearer the rocks that rose up in rough, jagged precipitous masses — the leaves dashing against the grim walls in impotent fu ry — roaring and foaming like a caldron o f boiling water — high up overhead in the dark clouds reared the old waichtower, like a spectre, its towering form — it was a wild, superb scene but which I wish never again to behold. We were but some twenty feet from the cliffs, which threatened us with in­ stant annihilation i f cast upon them. Rami, rami, we all shouted when the rudder went — and all grasped the oars but soon finding it created confusion we had to leave them to the boatmen who, placing them out at the stern as a substitute fo r the rudder, managed to keep off. It was a moment of intense suspense — life and death depended on holding out from the rocks■ long enough for the wind to carry us round the point o f the cliffs that rose perpendicular as a brickwall. Giovanni lay clenching his fist in the agony o f fea r with a countenance so dole­ fu l and miserable that a ghost would have laughed him- self back to his tomb at the sight. A t this moment o f imminent peril, I fe lt fo r the first time what an awful thing it is toface death , suddenly, unprepared and, as here, impotent even to make a struggle