The sea is one of the most beautiful objects in nature, whether we watch it breaking in playful ripples on the pebbly beach, or shrink from it aghast when it rushes along the shore in the full thunder of its wrath, seething, tortured, convulsed, struggling in the clutch of the storm-fiend. To us in England who owe it so much, to us who have for centuries reaped our harvests on its pathless plains, and made of its trackless billows a highway to fame and fortune, the sea has always been an object of intense, almost passionate interest. Hence there have never been wanting among us volunteers for the wild sea-life of freedom and adventure. The boy intended by fond parents for quite a different fate, dreams of the unknown sea as he creeps reluctant to and from school, devouring it may be the while some well-thumbed novel of Marryat's, instead of mastering the intricacies of a Latin verb; until at last, the passion growing with his growth, he leaves all else behind him and finds his way to the shore, and looks wonderingly at the great ships lying in the harbour. Blissful Edens these, which have fought many a battle with the mighty ocean, although they are lying now so quietly in dock, with their rigging stretching aloft like a network of twine, and piles of cable lazily laid up on deck like so many coiled snakes. Gradually he finds his way on board, and then discovers that the rose has thorns; that sea-life, in other words, is by no means an Elysium.

Such a career is sketched for us in an amusing book, Two Years Abaft the Mast, by F. W. H. Symondson. The author was an apprentice on board the Sea Queen, a sailing ship, bound for Sydney with a general cargo. The ship was a good one, registered A1 at Lloyd's, and carried a crew of twelve able-bodied seamen, four ordinary seamen, and three apprentices besides himself. There were also three mates—the first, second, and third.

Naturally life at sea is made up very much of routine, and the routine on board the Sea Queen was after the following fashion. A sea-day commences at mid-day, when we must suppose the starboard watch, to which our apprentice belonged, to be below. At twelve o'clock (eight bells) he comes up along with his watch, to relieve the port watch, who then have dinner. The second mate, who has charge of the starboard watch, then sees that every one goes to his proper work. He gives an eye to the steering of the ship, and carefully notes any shifting of the wind. A fresh helmsman relieves the man at the wheel, and receives directions as to steering from him; and our apprentice being the youngest, looks after the time and strikes the bells. At half-past twelve he strikers one bell, at one o'clock two bells, and so on. At four o'clock, eight bells are struck, and the port watch is called; and as soon as the man at the wheel is relieved, the starboard watch go below, and smoke or read or spin yarns until tea-time, which is at five o'clock. They then receive a pint of the pale inky coloured nectar which does duty for tea on board ship, and along with it salt pork or junk. This is cooked in different ways; chopped up with biscuit, water, and slush, by which is meant the grease from salt meat, it forms a sea-delicacy called sconse. Another bonne bouche is dandy-funk, which is compounded of powdered biscuit, molasses, water, and slush; while dogsbody, composed of pea-soup, powdered biscuit, and slush, is also considered to form a savoury and refreshing compound. At six o'clock the other watch come below, and have their tea. During the first dog-watch, from four to six, no regular work is done, but no larking is allowed; but the second watch, from six to eight, is given up to fun and frolic of the maddest and merriest description, such as chasing rats with belaying-pins, or trying to turn the cook out of his galley, while he defends himself with boiling water. At eight o'clock the wild scrimmage ceases as if by magic, the starboard watch turn into their berths, and nothing is heard but the measured tread of the look-out on the forecastle head, and the soft murmur of the wind and sea, as the night-breeze fills the sails, and the Sea Queen glides onward to her destination through the rippling water.

At midnight the port watch is relieved, all hands muster on deck, and the mate in charge sings out: 'Relieve the look-out! Relieve the man at the wheel!' and then all is silent again until four o'clock, when the starboard watch go below, and the port watch come up.

The cook is called at four; and from half-past five to six the men have their coffee, and then comes the order: 'Brooms and buckets aft, to wash the decks;' which shews that the work of the day has begun. While the decks are being scrubbed, the captain generally makes his appearance, and after inspecting the compass and the sails, sits down in his favourite arm-chair on the poop with a book. On Saturday afternoons each watch are allowed an hour to wash their clothes, and at half-past four or five the stores for the week are served out: these consist of articles such as sugar, vinegar, &c.

In the little world of the ship, the captain is an irresponsible autocrat; his word is law; to refuse to obey him is mutiny. The sole command of the navigation and working of the ship rests with him, and the weather-side of the poop is his private property when he chooses to come on deck. In the ordinary daily work he seldom interferes personally, but transmits all his orders through the chief mate, who is a very important officer, and who superintends everything. When the cargo is stowed, he must give an acknowledgment for it and for all goods in the hold, and must make up any deficiencies. He must also keep the log-book, which is a very important trust. The officer of each watch marks upon the log-slate the courses, the distance run, the winds, and any subject of interest; and these at the end of every twenty-four hours are copied into the official log-book by the chief mate. The duties of the second and third mate are less onerous; but they must always be addressed by the prefix of 'Mr' and answered with 'Sir.' The third mate has to dispense the stores—a very unpopular office, and one which does not fail to call down a shower of anything but blessings upon his devoted head. A boatswain is in general only carried by large ships, and his sole duty is to look after the rigging and all that concerns it. The carpenter is both an important and independent personage on board ship; the captain alone gives him his orders, and he has nothing to do with any of the three mates; his usual sobriquet is 'Chips.' The steward is in point of fact the captain's servant, and although he is well paid, he is generally looked down upon by the crew, who call him 'Flunkey.'

Pursuing the narrative presented to us by the Sea Queen's apprentice, we find that the cook, if he is a good one, is a very important personage on board ship; he answers generally to the name of 'Slushy' or 'the Doctor,' and requires to be, and indeed almost always is, an individual of some resource, for he practises his calling amid difficulties such as would utterly dismay a chef de cuisine on land. His kitchen, to begin with, is such a mite of a place that the wonder is that he can fry, roast, or boil anything in it; then it is provokingly subject to sudden inundations, partial deluges which come tumbling in as if in sport, playfully extinguishing his stove, and sending his provisions, cooking utensils, and seasonings sliding and spinning all around him; while if he is worth his salt he will still, in spite of all these difficulties, turn out such a meal for the cabin table as Soyer under the circumstances need not have blushed to own. As is befitting in the case of such a superior being, he has certain social advantages; he can smoke in his galley whenever he chooses; and he slumbers peacefully all night in the best bunk of the forecastle, blissfully unconscious of the existence or claims of port or starboard watches. The apprentices are not so well off, although a premium of from thirty to sixty guineas is sometimes paid for their term of four years; the only advantage they have is living apart from the crew. Their duties are the same as those of a forecastle boy, and they share the same food, which is sufficient in quantity, but often very bad as to quality.

On the 9th March the first Australian sea-birds were sighted; and on the morning of the 16th they cast anchor in Sydney Harbour, which, with its wooded hills sloping gently down to the sea, seemed to our apprentice a perfect paradise of beauty. At Sydney they remained a fortnight, enjoying the luxury of very good and very cheap dinners, for meat only cost from twopence to fourpence per pound. After discharging their cargo, they sailed to Newcastle, sixty miles distant, to take in a cargo of coal, with which they sailed on the 23d April for Hong-kong, where they arrived on the 15th of June.

While at Hong-kong they had abundance of buffalo-meat, eggs, fruit, and soft bread, and plenty of hard work too, in washing out the hold of the ship, which had been much begrimed by the coals, to fit it for a cargo of tea. This the captain was unable to obtain, and was in consequence obliged to sail to Foo-chow, on the river Min, where, on the 13th of July, they arrived at Pagoda anchorage, so called from an old pagoda built on an island in the river, which widens out here to the dimensions of a small lake. Here also they waited in vain for a freight of tea, and the captain at last resolved to take a native cargo of poles to Shanghae, and try for better luck there.

On the 14th September they entered the Yangtze-kiang, where they found the scenery flat and uninteresting, but yet home-like, for the river reminded them of the Thames below London.

In the course of a week they unloaded their timber, but still no freight of tea could be procured; and the captain, after some delay, resolved to return to Foo-chow, taking as ballast native goods and medicines, two dozen sheep, and two dozen passengers. On the voyage back to Foo-chow, the cook having abandoned his post in disgust at the sharpness of a new Chinese steward, our apprentice was induced to volunteer his services, and was formally installed in his new office at four o'clock one fine morning. He began his arduous task by trying to kindle a fire, which for more than an hour obstinately resisted all his efforts to make it burn. At last he succeeded in evoking a tiny blaze, and thankful at heart even for that small mercy, he placed upon his fire the copper with water for the breakfast coffee, and marched off elate to get the rations for the day. It chanced to be a pork and pea-soup day; and having got his supplies of pork and pease, he returned to his galley, and was horror-struck to find that the sea was washing into it every few minutes, sometimes sportively rising almost as high as the precious fire which had cost him so much trouble. In his anxiety to preserve this cherished flame, the little tub of pork, which he had put out of his hands for a moment, capsized, and its contents were washed swiftly round and round the galley, to the surprise and disgust of the unfortunate amateur. At last, giving chase, he succeeded in capturing them with a considerable admixture of cinders; and having placed the tub and its heterogeneous contents out of harm's way, he concentrated his energies upon the question of the moment, which was coffee.

Tired of waiting for the water to boil, he threw in the coffee, and then, to while away the time, he began to pare some potatoes, which, by some unaccountable fatality, as fast as they were pared rolled out of the basin in which he placed them, upon the floor. Whish! away went the ship, lurching heavily, and away went the tub of pork again; and pork, tub, and potatoes began chasing each other round the galley in gallant style, being kept in countenance by a couple of buckets, which went frantically clanging and clanking against each other and everything else that came in their way. Despair shews itself in many ways: at this crisis our apprentice laughed; and he was still grinning over his own mishaps, when the watch arrived, sharp set for their coffee.

They were by no means in a laughing humour when they learned how the land lay, and neither was he, for that matter, when they left him. Convinced that at all risks he must make the water boil, he frantically heaped upon the fire odd bits of rope and canvas; but the water had a will of its own, and boil it would not. Eight o'clock struck, and again they came, each holding out an empty hook-pot, which he filled with by no means the best grace in the world, trying, as he ladled out the vile mixture, to sink the coffee, which floated like dust upon the surface. It would not do. First one man came growling back, and then another, and then the steward arrived to ask after the captain's potatoes. The captain's potatoes! He had forgotten all about them, and they had meanwhile been having a rare lark of it on deck, rattling first into one hole and then into another, until at last the greater number of them had scuttled overboard. What had he done? Had he been guilty of mutiny, insubordination, or gross carelessness as bad as either, on the high seas? In his panic he stepped back into the galley, which, for a wonder, happened to be free from water, and a hot coal falling out of the stove, burned his foot; and so ingloriously ended his career as cook.

At Pagoda Island the captain became seriously ill; and notwithstanding the most careful nursing on the part of his wife and our sailor apprentice, he passed away without ever having recovered consciousness, and was interred in the English cemetery at Foo-chow.

On the 6th November, the Sea Queen having loaded up, and being ready to start, a new captain came on board, the crew standing by the break of the forecastle and keenly eyeing him as he stepped on deck. There was not much to look at in him. He was a middle-sized man, with a moustache and whiskers of a sandy red hue; and that he did not despise his creature-comforts was evident from the quantity of provisions that came on board next day. He was, however, not illiberal with his good things, but from time to time presented the apprentices' mess with some little delicacies. As for the question of questions always asked by a crew with regard to a new captain: 'Does he carry on?' that is, does he risk a large press of sail in a stiff wind, it had to be answered in the negative. He was, in fact, as timid as his predecessor had been, but from a different cause—he had always formerly commanded a steamer, and his new duties were strange to him.

They had now been at sea for several weeks, when one lovely evening our apprentice was with his watch on deck, and had just lain down for an hour's nap, when the after-bell was struck hurriedly three times. As it was his duty to keep the time, and as the three strokes had, moreover, nothing to do with the proper hour, he suspected that something was wrong with the helmsman, a Swede, Edghren Andrews, and was just about to verify his suspicion, when the man rushed up to him and said: 'Will you take the wheel for a minute? I feel very sick; perhaps a swig of cold tea will set me up.' He went to get it; and in a few minutes returned to his post, where he had scarcely been a quarter of an hour, when the bell was again struck twice. A second time he went to the helmsman's assistance, and on the poop met Andrews, who said he was worse than ever; whereupon our apprentice offered to finish up his time for him.

Next morning the Swede took him into the forecastle and related the following curious story. The evening before, while at the wheel, he had suddenly seen the late captain on the weather-side of the poop, anxiously looking up at the sails and sky; and while he stared at him in mute surprise, he turned round angrily, and looked at him with such a horrible expression of face, that he dropped the wheel in a panic and rang the bell. In Sweden, he said, ghosts were supposed to have a special dislike to a knife and to the Bible; so he rushed below to procure them, by way of charm; but although he could have got a whole bucketful of knives, he could not lay his hands upon a single Bible; and so he took instead a Swedish novel, thinking that as the late captain had not understood Swedish, it could not make much difference. He soon found, however, that he had reckoned without his host. He was no sooner set down to the wheel than the ghost reappeared, and approaching the binnacle, looked at the compass, and made angry signs to him to alter the vessel's course. So much for sea superstitions.

On boxing-day the ordinary routine of ship-life was broken by a terrible accident. The port watch had just finished tea, and had turned into their bunks for a smoke and a read, when a frightful clamour and trampling of feet got up overhead. In a moment every one was on deck, where all was in the wildest hurry and confusion. 'A man overboard!' was the cry. 'Who is it? Who is gone?' asked half-a-dozen voices. 'Johnson!' answered the second mate, excitedly hauling at a rope. 'Haul up the mainsail!' shouted the mate, in tones that rung clear and high above the uproar. 'Slack away the sheet, lads! Bear down on the clew garnets.' All was in vain: the sea was so high that the ship could not be brought round to the wind, and the captain would not hear of a boat being launched. 'It would only,' he very justly said, 'put more lives in jeopardy.' With breathless excitement the look-outs at each mast-head strained their eyes into the darkness of the wild night. The black waves were tumbling mountain high, and there, like a cork upon the billows, was their drowning messmate, slowly drifting astern to his doom. A cold shudder ran through the veins of the breathless watchers. Could nothing be done to help him? Nothing! The helmsman threw him a life-buoy as he passed; perhaps he seized it, perhaps he did not: he was never seen again.

On the 26th February they reached New York; and after unloading their tea, took in a cargo of grain and resin, and sailed for London on the 15th of March. It was a bad season of the year, and the ship was overladen with grain, which makes a peculiarly heavy and unelastic cargo. The weather, stormy from the first, grew gradually worse until the 23d of March, when the gale freshened into a tempest, and that again into the wildest conceivable hurricane. Some frightful hours followed; the waves rolled along the bulwarks like mountains of blackish green water; the roar of wind and sea was inconceivably fearful, and suggested to the shivering crew the idea of something demoniac. At last it became evident to all, that unless the sails could be got rid of, the ship would founder. Who was to risk his life in the attempt? What hero would be found to do this deed of courage? As usual the hour brought the man in the person of Jack Andersen, a Swedish sailor. With his open knife between his teeth, this brave fellow sprang along the encumbered deck undaunted by a heavy sea which broke over him; and soon a loud explosion told of his success; the last sail was gone, and the Sea Queen lay like a helpless log upon the waters. At three in the morning a lull occurred, and the wind and sea gradually went down; but the vessel continuing to sink deeper in the water, it was necessary to lighten her, and fifty tons of cargo were thrown overboard. The sacrifice saved her; and on the 1st of April they sighted the welcome Lizard light. As for the suffering and discomfort on board subsequent to the storm, it was simply inconceivable. Our apprentice's chest floated bottom up for days; and his log-book, which was locked up in it, got a thorough soaking, which fortunately did not render it illegible, else we should have missed a very graphic and interesting narrative of life at sea.