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powers of fancy that it appeared incompatible with the existence of any ship whatever.

The rain poured on him, flowed, drove in sheets. He was plunged in rushing water, like a diver holding on to 5 a stake planted in the bed of a swollen river. He breathed in gasps, and sometimes the water he swallowed was fresh and sometimes it was salt. For the most part he kept his eyes shut tight, as if suspecting his sight might be destroyed in the immense flurry of the elements. When he 10 ventured to blink hastily he derived some moral support from the green gleam of the starboard light, shining feebly upon the flight of rain and sprays. He was actually looking at it when its ray fell upon the uprearing head of the sea, which put it out.

15 He saw the head of the wave topple over, adding the

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mite of its crash to the tremendous uproar raging around him, and almost at the same instant the stanchion was wrenched from his grasp. After a crushing thump on the back he found himself suddenly afloat and borne away. 20 His first irresistible notion was that the whole China Sea had climbed on the bridge. Then, more sanely, he concluded himself gone overboard. All the time he was being tossed, flung, and rolled in great volumes of water, and discovered himself to have become somehow mixed up with 25 a face, an oilskin coat, somebody's boots. He clawed ferociously all these things in turn, lost them, found them again, lost them once more, and was caught in the firm

clasp of a pair of stout arms. He had found his captain. They tumbled over and over each other, tightening their hug. Suddenly the water let them down with a brutal bang, and, stranded against the side of the wheelhouse, out of breath and bruised, they were left to stagger up in 5 the wind and hold on where they could.

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The motion of the ship was extravagant. Her lurches had an appalling helplessness. Both ends were under water, and the sea, flattened down in the heavier gusts, would uprise and overwhelm them in snowy rushes of 10 foam expanding wide, beyond both rails, into the night. The middle structure of the ship was like a rock, with the water boiling up, streaming over, pouring off, beating

round, - like a rock that had been miraculously struck adrift from a coast and gone wallowing upon the sea.

When the Nan-Shan came to an anchor the sunshine was bright, the breeze fresh. She came in from a green, 5 hard sea,green like a furrowed slab of jade streaked and splashed with frosted silver. Even before her story got about, the seamen in harbor said: "Look! Look at that steamer! Siamese, is n't she? Just look at her!"

She was incrusted and gray with salt to the trucks of 10 her masts and to the top of her funnel, "as if," as some

facetious seaman said, "the crowd on board had fished her out somewhere from the bottom of the sea and brought her in for salvage.'

She seemed indeed to have served as a target for the 15 secondary batteries of a whole fleet. She had about her the worn, weary air of ships coming from the far ends of the world, and indeed, with truth, for in her short passage she had been very far, sighting even the coast of the Great Beyond. Abridged from The Typhoon

typhoon: a violent hurricane occurring in the Chinese seas. - sinister : foreboding danger. - bridge: a raised platform on a ship where the captain and pilot stand. — palpitated: made itself felt. — vial of wrath: a familiar figure of speech in Hebrew poetry. See Revelation xvi. 1. stanchions: posts. incompatible: not agreeing. Siamese: belonging to Siam, an Eastern kingdom. —— facetious: joking. — salvage: compensation allowed for saving a ship. secondary batteries: the smaller guns, the effect of which would be to riddle rather than to destroy a ship.

LIFE'S TORCH

HENRY NEWBOLT

HENRY JOHN NEWBOLT is an English writer and poet.

NOTE. The old game of cricket, which is popular at English schools, has a few points of resemblance to baseball, but in other ways it differs widely.

There's a breathless hush in the Close to-night

Ten to make and the match to win —

A bumping pitch and a blinding light,
An hour to play and the last man in.
And it's not for the sake of a ribboned coat,
Or the selfish hope of a season's fame,
But his Captain's hand on his shoulder smote
Play up! play up! and play the game!"

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This is the word that year by year

While in her place the School is set

Every one of her sons must hear,

And none that hears it dare forget.

This they all with a joyful mind

Bear through life like a torch in flame,

And falling fling to the host behind

"Play up! play up! and play the game!"

Close: an inclosed field or yard. — bumping pitch: an uneven, difficult ground. When regularly delivered the ball strikes the " pitch" between the player who serves the ball and the batsman.

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ROBINSON CRUSOE'S BOAT

DANIEL DEFOE

DANIEL DEFOE (1661-1731) was the first English novelist. He began life as a tradesman, but soon became interested in politics and held several government offices. His skill as a journalist led him to invent stories when real life failed to supply him with literary material, and he gradu5 ally became a writer of fiction, although he cleverly gave to his stories every appearance of reality. The adventures of a certain sailor named Alexander Selkirk furnished Defoe with all the foundation he needed for his famous book, The Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, which was published in 1719.

NOTE. Robinson Crusoe, a Yorkshire sailor, having been shipwrecked in the Caribbean Sea, is washed upon the shore of an uninhabited island, where he lives for several years alone. His experiences in adapting himself to his new life are as full of interest to-day as they were two hundred years ago. His attempt to build a boat, after seeing, in the far distance, 15 a misty headland, is strikingly human at every point.

All the while these things were doing you may be sure my thoughts ran many times upon the prospect of land, which I had seen from the other side of the island; and

I was not without some secret wishes that I was on shore 20 there, fancying that I might find some way or other to convey myself farther. But I made no allowance for the dangers of such a condition, and that I might fall into the hands of savages, such as I might have reason to think far worse than the lions and tigers of Africa. 25 All these things took up none of my apprehensions at first; yet my head ran mightily upon the thought of getting over to the shore.

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