A regular "Channel night"--a night which Mr. Augustus Winder, Paris
traveler to H---- and Co., the mighty mercers of Regent Street, spoke of
in after days with a shudder of reminiscence mingling with the pride of
one who has endured and survived great peril; who has gone down to the
sea in ships, and seen the wonders of the deep. His associates--the
_elite_ of the silk-and-ribbon department--youths of polished manners
and fascinating address, than whom _non alii leviore saltu_ took the
counter in their stride--would gather round the narrator in respectful
admiration, just as the young sea-dogs of Nantucket might listen to a
veteran hunter of the sperm whale as he tells of a hurricane that caught
him in the strait between the Land of Fire and terrible Cape Horn.
Mr. Winder represented himself as having assisted all on board, from the
captain down to the cabin-boy, with his counsel and encouragement, and
as having been materially useful to the man at the wheel. The fact was,
that he cried a good deal during the night, and was incessant in his
appeals to the steward and Heaven for help. In his appeals to the latter
power he employed often a strangely modified form of the Apostles'
Creed; for his religious education had been neglected, and this was his
solitary and simple idea of an orison.
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