More than once I held my breath and clenched my teeth, as I felt the ship sending forward, and saw the wide, deep valley into which she was plunging, and the long, huge, watery height rolling on towards us, and looking as if it must overwhelm us.  And then, when having, by a miracle it seemed, escaped the threatened danger, to see another valley just as deep and wide, and another mountain just as big--and to know that though we might rush ever so fast onward, we should find valley after valley just as deep, and mountain after mountain just as big for days and days, or weeks to come, perhaps; when, too, I heard the howling and whistling of the wind, and the creaking and complaining of the timbers and bulkheads, and the roar and dash of the seas,--I own that I could not help wishing that my feet were planted on some firm ground, and that I were enjoying the wild scene from a distance.