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slack-water again, when we weighed and made for home. We never set
out upon this expedition without a steady side wind for going and
coming--one that we felt sure would not fail us before our return--and
we seldom made a mis-calculation upon this point. Twice, during six
years, we were forced to stay all night at anchor on account of a dead
calm, which is a rare thing indeed just about here; and once we had to
remain on the grounds nearly a week, starving to death, owing to a
gale which blew up shortly after our arrival, and made the channel too
boisterous to be thought of. Upon this occasion we should have been
driven out to sea in spite of everything, (for the whirlpools threw us
round and round so violently, that, at length, we fouled our anchor
and dragged it) if it had not been that we drifted into one of the
innumerable cross currents--here to-day and gone to-morrow--which drove
us under the lee of Flimen, where, by good luck, we brought up.
"I could not tell you the twentieth part of the difficulties we
encountered 'on the grounds'--it is a bad spot to be in, even in
good weather--but we made shift always to run the gauntlet of the
Moskoe-ström itself without accident; although at times my heart has
been in my mouth when we happened to be a minute or so behind or before
the slack. The wind sometimes was not as strong as we thought it at
starting, and then we made rather less way than we could wish, while
the current rendered the smack unmanageable. My eldest brother had a son
eighteen years old, and I had two stout boys of my own. These would have
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