Then

for by this time I could calculate, with some approach to accuracy, the direction of my drift. Again the thought of my mother came upon me. I was her only son-her almost sole hope-the comforter and darling of her old age. Perhaps even now she was thinking of me. I seemed to see her silver hair, and hear her mild voice once more. the vision of that grey head, bowed in grief, arose. I beheld her in the weeds of deep mourning, bent in body and prostrate in mind. They had told her that her child had been lost overboard some months ago, and was now a thousand fathoms in the sea. I groaned audibly. God knows, even in that awful hour, it was less of myself than of my mother I thought! I was now rapidly approaching the frigate. "Hillo!-hillo!" I cried, waving my arm above my head, rose upon the crest of the wave.

as

I

I had but an instant to watch the effect of my cry, before was submerged again. But there was time enough to assure me that I had not been heard.

I

I noticed, with terrible misgivings, that my voice was much weaker than it had been half an hour before. Was I so soon becoming exhausted? At this rate an hour more would probably extinguish life.

This idea filled me with alarm, and as I gained the crest of the next billow, I made a desperate exertion to shout both louder and quicker.

“Hillo !—hillo !-hillo-0-0-0-0!" I frantically cried.

I was still prolonging the sound when the comb of a wave went over me, and, half blinded as well as smothered, I was tumbled headlong down into the trough of the sea, which I reached more dead than alive. I was still so exhausted when I rose on the next billow that I could not speak.

With agony inexpressible I now saw myself nearly abreast of the frigate. Another descent, another mad whirl upward, and I found her shooting from me. I was now almost delirious with despair.

"Hillo!-ahoy!" I cried. "O for the love of God, hear me !"

I fancied I saw a look-out turn toward me. I knew he must have heard me. If I could have remained on the top

of that surge an instant longer his eye would have fallen on me; but the insatiate gulf demanded me, and seized in the embraces of the pitiless waves, I was hurled down to darkness and death.

When I next rose to the light of day, the man-of-war was fast receding. I was so utterly drenched, so breathless from being nearly smothered, that I could not raise my voice above that of a child, and hence failed to attract the attention of the look-out, whom I still saw gazing in search of me.-May heaven grant that none who read these words may ever experience feelings similar to mine at that moment! In another instant I had recovered my voice, but the frigate was now out of hearing.

Suddenly, just as I was giving way to despair, I saw in the distance a large ship driving before the gale, under a reefed main-topsail and storm stay-sail. She was heading directly towards me. This afforded a new gleam of hope. If I could but arrest her attention I thought I should be rescued. I forgot that it would be first necessary to throw her into the wind, and that the risk of her broaching to in this manœuvre would probably prevent her paying any attention to my cries.

On she came, racing like some mad courser, yet riding the gigantic billows buoyantly as a bird. Now half enveloped in the driving foam-now rolling her vast yardarms almost to the water-now showing her keel as far back as the dripping fore-chains, she presented a spectacle of the most terrible sublimity.

She was somewhat to leeward of me, but nevertheless I shouted with all my might, again and again.

It was in vain. The crew clingling to the rigging, were all engaged, each in his own preservation, and no more noticed the half-buried figure calling to them, than they observed the sea-bird that swept the billows before them. I shouted, I shrieked, I waved my arm frantically over my head. But all to no purpose. I heard the fierce bubbling of the waters as the mighty ship tore through them close at hand; I caught a glimpse of the pale and terrified faces of her crew, gleaming out in the angry light of the setting

sun; and then the vision passed, a Titonic wave upheaved and I was alone.

between us,

Alone, on the illimitable ocean! Alone, while night was drawing on! Alone, with no chances of escape remaining! Far, far to leeward, just visible occasionally over the distant surges, I saw my own vessel; but except this, the horizon was without a speck.

I burst into tears. The tension of my nerves had been unnatural; they now gave way; and, as I saw nothing but death before me, I wept like a child. Yet still it was the thought of my mother that affected me, not any consideration of self. My whole past life rushed in a review before me. I saw myself at my mother's knee looking and wondering as she taught me to pray. I was a boy going to school, now chasing a butterfly, now watching the angler from the village bridge, but ever loitering on my way. I saw my little sister die, and after her, one by one, in that season of terrible epidemic, my four brothers. I followed my father to the grave, the last victim to that pestilence; I wept with my surviving parent-I promised always to stay by her—I was her all in all. And then with the flight I was older and more and better. A strange

of

years came other pictures. adventurous, but, I fear, not wiser longing for the sea had seized me. I had secretly joined a ship sailing to the Mediterranean, and was now on my return. But, alas! I was never to see that happy home again. The avenging bolt had overtaken me. No mother would ever weep above my ashes, no kind hand would deck the sod with flowers. My doom was to be tossed to and fro, midway down the depths of the ocean, until the trumpet of the archangel should sound.

The night began to close in. Darker and darker the shades of evening fell around the waste of waters, and the wind, as it went by, seemed moaning my requiem. Occasionally the lightning threw a ghastly radiance across the water. I was cold, weary, and half stupified. My senses began to desert me. No longer able to buffet against fate as I had done, I took in each moment larger draughts of the briny element. In fact I was drowning. Things

actual and things visionary-the present and the pastbegan to commingle in my brain in a wild phantasmagoria. Faces of childhood, the sweet faces of my dear brothers and sister, looked at me from the sky above; while hideous ones, the countenances seen in fever-dreams, grinned out from the spray around. Confused noises, too, were in my ears. There was music as if from celestial spheres; then notes as if demons laughed in the gale. Gradually all things, seen or heard, became more and more indistinct; a deep blank swam before me, leaving only the sensation of blackness; and then followed utter forgetfulness, the stupor of the dead-or rather that trance between life and death, when the body is exhausted, but the vital spark not yet fled--that one dread pause between this world and the

next.

I have no recollection of anything further, until I was partially roused from my insensibility by a hand being laid on me. The next instant I was dragged violently through the water, and thrown on my chest across some sharp substance, which I concluded was the gunwale of a boat. I fell with such force as to eject from me, as from a forcepump, the water I had swallowed. The excessive pain roused me to more complete consciousness. I languidly opened my eyes. I thought I recognized familiar faces; the doubt was settled immediately by a well-known voice. Easy there, Jack-poor fellow! he is almost gonenow my hearties!"

66

The words were spoken in the kind tones of the mate. I knew now that I had been picked up by our ship's boat. She was lying head-on to the waves, to prevent her being swamped while she took me up. Obeying the directions of the mate, the men with a second effort lifted me completely out of the water, and laid me in the stern-sheets of the boat.

"God help us,

"How do you feel?" asked the mate. we were looking for you in the wrong direction, till, all at once, I remembered you ought to be to windward, and so at last made you out, a mere speck on the horizon. We had a hard pull to reach you, too? At first I thought we should

be swamped. But here you are safe. And now, my lads, give way lustily!"

The crew, at these words, put double strength into their oars, and away we sped toward the ship. What a sensation of comfort and security came over me as I felt the planks under me, and heard the waters which, cheated of their prey, followed roaring in our wake.

I looked up towards the mate, who, steering with one hand, was covering me with his jacket with the other. He was doing it, too, as tenderly as a mother wraps her babe. O how full my heart was. I tried to raise myself on my elbow and speak.

"Nay shipmate," he said, placing his hand on my shoulder gently, as if to press me down, “not a word. You need rest you were three hours in the water."

In truth this little excursion had made me dizzy. I heard his words as in a dream, and sunk back, while all things seemed to whirl around me. I closed my eyes, and presently, in a whisper, the mate said

"He sleeps, I don't think he could have stood it five minutes longer. Who would have told his mother?"

From this time until I awoke in my berth, I lay in a state of profound insensibility. They have told me, that on reaching the ship they thought me gone; but by chafing my limbs and employing stringent restoratives they recovered me. I soon after sunk into a refreshing sleep, and when I awoke in the morning was perfectly well, though weak.

It was quite dark, it appears, when we reached the ship, so that if my discovery had come a few minutes later, it is exceedingly doubtful whether or not I could have been saved.

Years have passed since then, and I have rehearsed my deliverance a thousand times, yet I always shudder to recall those terrible hours when OVERBOARD IN THE GULF.