at the windlass, began, and in a few moments we were under way. The noise of the water thrown from the bows began to be heard, the vessel leaned over from the damp night breeze, and rolled with the heavy ground swell, and we had actually begun our long, long journey. This was literally bidding "good night” to my native land.

The first day we passed at sea was the Sabbath. As we were just from port, and there was a great deal to be done on board, we were kept at work all day, and at night the watches were set, and every thing put into sea order. I had now a fine time for reflection. I felt for the first time the perfect silence of the sea. The officer was walking the quarter deck, where I had no right to go; one or two men were talking on the forecastle, whom I had little inclination to join; so that I was left open to the full impression of every thing about me. However much I was affected by the beauty of the sea, the bright stars, and the clouds driven swiftly over them, I could not but remember that I was separating myself from all the social and intellectual enjoyments of life. Yet, strange as it may seem, I did then and afterwards take pleasure in these reflections, hoping by them to prevent my becoming insensible to the value of what I was leaving.

But all my dreams were soon put to flight by an order from the officer to trim the yards, as the wind was getting ahead; and I could plainly see, by the looks the sailors occasionally cast to windward, and by the dark clouds that were fast coming up, that we had bad weather to prepare for, and had heard the captain say that he expected to be in the Gulf Stream by twelve o'clock. In a few minutes, eight bells were struck, the watch called, and we went below.

I now began to feel the first discomforts of a sailor's life. The steerage in which I lived was filled with coils of rigging, spare sails, old junk, and ship stores, which had not been stowed away. Moreover, there had been no berths built for us to sleep in, and we were not allowed to drive nails to hang our clothes upon. The sea, too, had risen, the vessel was rolling

heavily, and every thing was pitched about in grand confusion. I shortly heard the rain drops falling on deck, thick and fast, and the watch evidently had their hands full of work, for I could hear the loud and repeated orders of the mate, the trampling of feet, the creaking of blocks, and all the accompaniments of a coming storm.

When I got upon deck, a new scene and a new experience were before me. The little brig was close hauled upon the wind, and lying over, as it then seemed to me, nearly upon her beam ends. The heavy head sea was beating against her bows with the noise and force almost of a sledge hammer, and flying over the deck, drenching us completely through. The topsail halliards had been let go, and the great sails were filling out and backing against the masts with a noise like thunder. The wind was whistling through the rigging, loose ropes flying about; loud, and to me unintelligible, orders constantly given, and rapidly executed, and the sailors "singing" out at the ropes in their hoarse and peculiar strains. In addition to all this, I had not got my sea legs on," was dreadfully sick, with hardly strength enough to hold on to any thing, and it was "pitch dark." This was my state when I was ordered aloft, for the first time, to reef topsails.

66

IIow I got along I cannot now remember. I "laid out" on the yards, and held on with all my strength. I could not have been of much service, for I remember having been sick several times before I left the topsail yard. Soon all was snug aloft, and we were again allowed to go below. This I did not consider much of a favor, for the confusion of every thing below, and that inexpressible sickening smell caused by the shakingup of the bilge water in the hold, made the steerage but an indifferent refuge from the cold, wet decks. I had often read of the nautical experiences of others, but I felt as though there could be none worse than mine; for in addition to every other evil, I could not but remember that this was only the first night of a two years' voyage.

LXXVIII. THE BATTLE OF HASTINGS.

DICKENS.

[This account of the battle of Hastings, fought October 15, 1066, is taken from A Child's History of England, written by Charles Dickens, and originally published in successive numbers of Household Words. Edward the Confessor, the predecessor of Harold, it is said, had made a will appointing William of Normandy his successor. Before Edward's death, Harold, being then in Normandy, had taken an oath to sur port William's pretensions to the English crown.]

HAROLD was crowned King of England on the very day of the maudlin Confessor's funeral. He had good need to be quick about it. When the news reached Norman William, hunting in his park at Rouen, he dropped his bow, returned to his palace, called his nobles to council, and presently sent ambassadors to Harold, calling on him to keep his oath and resign the crown. Harold would do no such thing. The barons of France leagued together round Duke William for the invasion of England. Duke William promised freely to distribute English wealth and English lands among them. The pope sent to Normandy a consecrated banner, and a ring containing a hair which he warranted to have grown on the. head of St. Peter. He blessed the enterprise, and cursed Harold, and requested that the Normans would pay "Peter's pence -or a tax to himself of a penny a year on every house a little more regularly in future, if they could make it convenient.

King Harold had a rebel brother in Flanders, who was a vassal of Harold Hardrada, King of Norway. This brother and this Norwegian king, joining their forces against England, with Duke William's help won a fight in which the English were commanded by two nobles, and then besieged York. Harold, who was waiting for the Normans on the coast at Hastings, with his army, marched to Stamford bridge, upon the River Derwent, to give them instant battle.

He found them drawn up in a hollow circle, marked out by their shining spears. Riding round this circle at a distance,

to survey it, he saw a brave figure on horseback, in a blue mantle and a bright helmet, whose horse suddenly stumbled and threw him.

"Who is that man who has fallen?" Harold asked of one of his captains.

"The King of Norway," he replied.

"He is a tall and stately king," said Harold, "but his end is near."

He added, in a little while, "Go yonder to my brother, and teil him if he withdraw his troops he shall be Earl of Northumberland, and rich and powerful in England."

The captain rode away and gave the message.

"What will he give to my friend the King of Norway?" asked the brother.

"Seven feet of earth for a grave," replied the captain.

"No more?" returned the brother, with a smile.

"The King of Norway being a tall man, perhaps a little more," replied the captain.

"Ride back," said the brother," and tell King Harold to make ready for the fight!"

He did so, very soon. And such a fight King Harold led against that force, that his brother, the Norwegian king, and every chief of note in all their host, except the Norwegian king's son, Olave, to whom he gave honorable dismissal, were left dead upon the field. The victorious army marched to York. As King Harold sat there at the feast, in the midst of all his company, a stir was heard at the doors, and messengers, all covered with mire from riding far and fast through broken ground, came hurrying in, to report that the Normans had landed in England.

The intelligence was true. They had been tossed about by contrary winds, and some of their ships had been wrecked. A part of their own shore, to which they had been driven back, was strewn with Norman bodies. But they had once more made sail, led by the duke's own galley, a present from his wife, upon the prow whereof the figure of a golden boy

stood pointing towards England. By day, the banner of the three Lions of Normandy, the diverse colored sails, the gilded vanes, the many decorations of this gorgeous ship, had glittered in the sun and sunny water; by night, a light had sparkled like a star at her mast head. And now, encamped near Hastings, with their leader lying in the old Roman castle of Pevensy, the English retiring in all directions, the land for miles around scorched and smoking, fired and pillaged, was the whole Norman power, hopeful and strong, un English ground.

Harold broke up the feast and hurried to London. Within a week, his army was ready. He sent out spies to ascertain the Norman strength. William took them, caused them to be led through his whole camp, and then dismissed. "The Normans," said these spies to Harold, are not bearded on the upper lip, as we English are, but are shorn. They are priests." "My men," replied Harold, with a laugh," will find those priests good soldiers."

66

"The Saxons," reported Duke William's outposts of Norman soldiers, who were instructed to retire as King Harold's arıny advanced, "rush on us through their pillaged country with the fury of madmen."

"Let them come, and come scon!" said Duke William.

Some proposals for a reconciliation were made, but were soon abandoned. In the middle of the month of October, in the year one thousand and sixty-six, the Normans and the English came front to front. All night the armies lay encamped before each other, in a part of the country then called Senlac, now called (in remembrance of them) Battle. With the first dawn of day they arose. There, in the faint light,

were the English on a hill; a wood behind them; in their midst, the royal banner, representing a fighting warrior woven in gold thread, adorned with precious stones; beneath the banner, as it rustled in the wind, stood King Harold on foot, with two of his remaining brothers by his side; around them, still and silent as the dead, clustered the whole English army