sixth she went off for wood only, leaving none but our hero and one John Adams on board. "The boat had scarce reached the island this last turn, before the day overcast, and there arose such a storm of wind, thunder, lightning, and hail, as I had never before seen. At last our cable broke close to the anchor, and away we went with the wind, full southward by west; and not having strength to keep the ship upon a side wind, we were forced to set her head right before it, and let her drive. Our hope was, every hour, the storm would abate; but it continued with equal violence for many days; during all which time, neither Adams nor I had any rest, for one or other of us was forced, and sometimes both, to keep her right before the wind, or she would certainly have overset. When the storm abated, as it did by degrees, neither Adams nor I could tell where we were, or in what part of the world." Though the sea was now very calm and smooth, yet the ship seemed to sail at as great a rate as before; which they, being but inexperienced navigators, attributed to the velocity she had acquired by the storm, or the currents, which had set that way by the violence of the wind. Thus sailing, they knew not whither, the sight of land, in the distance, makes the heart of both to leap for joy; and they trust that the currrent that seemed to carry them so fast, set in for some island or river which lay before them. Still they are exceedingly puzzled to account for the ship's making such way; and though not a breath of air was stirring, the nearer they approach land, which began now to be distinctly visible, the more speed does the vessel appear to make. Their speculations upon this unexpected phenomenon are unpleasantly interrupted by discovering, that the promised land, for which they had been looking out, was a rock of tremendous height. "Nor peaceful port was there, nor winding bay, To this iron-bound coast, as they drew nearer, the ship increased its motion, and all their strength could not make her answer the rudder any other way. "This put us under the apprehension of being dashed to pieces immediately; and, in less than half an hour, I verily thought my fears had not been groundless. Poor Adams told me he would try when the ship struck, if he could leap upon the rock, and ran to the head for that purpose: but I was so fearful of seeing my danger, that I ran under hatches, resolving to sink in the ship. We had no sooner parted, but I felt so violent a shock, that I verily thought the ship had brought down the whole rock upon her, and been thereby dashed to pieces; so that I never more expected to see the light. "I lay under this terror for at least half an hour, waiting the ship's either filling with water, or bulging every moment. But finding neither motion in her, nor any water rise, nor the least noise whatsoever, I ventured, with an aching heart, from my retreat, and stole up the hatchway as if an enemy had been on deck, peeping first one way, then another. Here nothing presented but confusion; the rock hung over the hatchway, at about twenty feet above my head, our foremast lay by the board, the mainmast yard-arm was down, and great part of the mainmast snapped off with it, and almost every thing upon deck was displaced. This sight shocked me extremely; and, calling for Adams, in whom I hoped to find some comfort, I was too soon convinced I had lost him." After standing for some time in the utmost confusion of mind and spirits, his first thought is to follow his comrade Adams into the other world; his next to fall on his knees, and petition for his deliverance; and, finally, after having refreshed himself with a biscuit and can of water, to sit him down upon the deck, and soliloquize. Here he reasons with himself in a very edifying manner, and comes at length to the conclusion, that, though fixed against his "will in this dismal mansion, destined, as rats might be, to devour the provisions, and, having eat all up, to die of hunger;" yet, as God was the author of his being, he only had a right to dispose of it, and he may not put an end thereto without his leave. Reconciled, by these and such thoughts, to his solitary abode, in a cleft of the rock, in which the ship had stuck immoveably fast, he walked about the vessel, of which, he mournfully reflected, he was "now both owner and master;" and having struck a light, he went down into the hold, to see what he could find which might be of service to him. Here he observes some long iron bars, lying all with one end close to the head of the ship, which, he presumed, was occasioned by the violent shock they received when she struck; but meaning, for some reason or other, to take one of them up, he had no sooner raised it, than it flew out of his hand, with such violence and noise, as sent him upon deck again, with his hair standing on an end, and no other thought than that some subtle demon had played him the prank merely to terrify him. For some days he durst, on no account, go into the hold; and the mystery even spoiled his rest, till one afternoon, as he was putting on his shoes, he happened to lay one of the buckles on the broken piece of mast upon which he sat, when, to his consternation, it was no sooner out of his hand, than up it flew to the rock, and stuck there. This put him in still greater perplexity: he was sorry to find "the devil had got above board," who must, as he imagined, have a hand in such unaccountable things. His reason, however, getting the better of his apprehensions, he makes experiments successively on a pipe, a bottle, and various other things, to try whether they would take the same course, when none of them answer; but the key of the cupboard, out of which he had taken them, happening to drop from his finger, whilst thus employed, it was no sooner disengaged, than away it went. Upon this, and finding that the needle of his compass stood fixed to the rock, he concluded that the latter contained great quantities of load-stone, or was itself one great magnet, and that their lading of iron was the cause of the ship's violent course above mentioned. During the three months he continued to live on board, he found the days grew shorter and shorter, till having lost the sun for a little while, they were nearly quite dark. This gloomy season he employed as well as he could, in shifting his water, to purify it-in rummaging the vessel, to ascertain more exactly what it contained, and in amusing himself with hopes, that ships were making towards him; for by the faint, glimmering light, he often fancied he saw large bodies moving at a little distance from him; but though he halloed as loud as he could, and often fired his gun, he never received an answer. He afterwards found reason to suspect, that what he had taken for ships were only large floating masses of ice that came int his vicinity. When light returned, and the days began to grow longer, he found his own spirits rise in proportion, and he determined to launch the ship's boat, and coast the rock quite round, in hope of finding a landing place, or perhaps a snug habitation on shore. This voyage he thought he might safely undertake, as he had never seen a troubled sea since he came to the islands; for though he heard the wind often roaring over his head, yet coming always from the land side, it never disturbed the water near the shore. Having replenished his bark with stores sufficient for a considerable voyage, and arms and ammunition, together with an axe or two, which might be of service, in case of his landing, he sets out on his expedition, "with God's speed," and commits himself " once more to Providence and the main ocean." During the three weeks he continued to coast the island, he saw no entrance any where, nor place to land in, nor any thing but the same unscaleable rock; till one evening, just as it was growing dark, "I heard a great noise, as of a fall of water, whereupon I proposed to lie by and wait for day, to see what it was; but the stream insensibly drawing me on, I soon found myself in an eddy; and the boat drawing forward, beyond all my power to resist it, I was quickly sucked under a low arch, where, if I had not fallen flat in my boat, having barely light enough to see my danger, I had undoubtedly been crushed to pieces, or driven overboard. I could perceive the boat to fall with incredible violence, as I thought, down a precipice, and suddenly whirled round and round with me, the water roaring on all sides, and dashing against the rock with a most amazing noise. "I expected every moment my poor little vessel would be staved against the rock, and I overwhelmed with waters; and for that reason never once attempted to rise up, or look upon my peril, till after the commotion had in some measure ceased. At length, finding the perturbation of the water abate, and as if by degrees I came into a smoother stream, I took courage just to lift up my affrighted head; but guess, if you can, the horror which seized me, on finding myself in the blackest of darkness, unable to perceive the smallest glimmer of light." Still, as the boat seemed to glide easily along, he roused himself so far as to strike a light, with materials he happened to have with him; but the horrors which this revealed, were worse than the darkness it dispelled; giving him the " tremendous view of an immense arch over his head, to which he could see no bounds." The stream itself, which might be about thirty yards broad, flowed black and murky, sometimes impeded by craggs, jutting out from the side of the cavern-at others running with such violence, where it was confined in a narrower channel, that unless his light had enabled him to keep the middle of the stream, he must have suffered a worse shipwreck than any that had yet befallen him. He was fortunate, too, in having some oil on board, to supply his lamp; yet, though he husbanded it with the utmost frugality, it was nearly spent, whilst the same gloomy arch yet hung suspended over his head, and no prospect of deliverance appeared. "I had now cut a piece of my shirt, for a wick to my last drop of oil, which I twisted and lighted. I burnt the oil in my brass tobacco-box, which I had fitted pretty well to answer the purpose. Sitting down, I had many black thoughts of what must follow the loss of my light, which I considered as near expiring, and that, I feared, for ever. I am here, thought I, like a poor condemned criminal, who knows his execution is fixed for such a day, nay, such an hour, and dies over and over in imagination, and by the torture of his mind, till that hour comes that hour which he so much dreads! and yet that very hour which releases him from all farther dread! Thus do I-my last wick is kindled-my last drop of fuel is consuming !—and I am every moment apprehending the shocks of the rock, the suffocation of the water; and, in short, thinking over my dying thoughts, till the snuff of my lamp throws up its last curling, expiring flame, and then my quietus will be presently signed." His spirits growing low and feeble at this melancholy prospect, he has recourse to his brandy bottle to raise them; when, reflecting that this would only increase his thirst, and that it were better to take a little of the white Madeira he had brought along with him, he applied what he took to be a bottle of the latter to his mouth, when the first gulp cheered his heart more than all the cordials in the world could have done—“ It is oil, cried I aloud, it is oil." In this incident, he once again acknowledges the superintendence of heaven over his affairs; and reposing his trust on the goodness of his Maker, who he had thus rescued him from being swallowed up in darkness, feels ground to hope, that he should yet live to praise him in the full brightness of day. A series of such meditations, after a considerable lapse of time, brought him once more under the fair canopy of heaven; when he found himself at one extremity of a prodigious lake, whose noble expanse was bordered with a grassy down, about half a mile wide, of the finest verdure he had ever seen this, again, was flanked with a grove rising around, like an amphitheatre, of the same breadth; whilst behind this, and above all, towered the naked rock to an immense height-so high, as to contract even the circle of the heavens, and to present an eternal barrier to all but birds of the strongest pinion and highest flight. Having thus emerged to new light and life, he forgot not the Providence that had protected him in the darkness of the cavern; but, kneeling on the green-sward, returned thanks for his deliverance-praying that he might continue to be shielded by his care, and that whatever should hereafter befall him, he might once more behold the green fields of the island of his birth, and die, at last, on his native soil. After a most delightful meal on his coarse fare by the grassy margin of the lake, taking his gun in hand, he walked towards the wood, in order to contemplate the retreat his destiny had assigned him; when, looking behind him and all around the plains, "is it possible," said he, " that so much art (for I did not then believe it was natural) could have been bestowed upon this place, and no inhabitant in it? Here are neither buildings, huts, castle, nor any living creature to be seen! It cannot be, says I, that this place was made for nothing." The extreme beauty of the wood next draws his attention, inviting him to explore its recesses, till the approach of darkness, when every thing about him, however agreeable in the day time, "would have more or less of horror in it," warned him to seek out a safe retreat for the night. Finding a small natural grotto in the rock, he determined to take up his quarters there, till the return of day; and disposing himself to rest, he slept as soundly as he had ever done on ship-board. Indeed, from the time he shot the gulf down to the present moment, he had not had the enjoy |