was to show us if we were saved, or to warn
us if we were to prepare for death. With
the first streak in the east, every one of the
boat’s company, except the sleeping and the
senseless, roused up and looked out in breathless
silence upon the sea. Slowly and slowly
the daylight strengthened, and the darkness
rolled off farther and farther before it over
the face of the waters. The first pale flush
of the sun flew trembling along the paths of
light broken through the grey wastes of the
eastern clouds. We could look clearly—we
could see far; and there, ahead of us—O!
merciful, bountiful providence of God!—there
was the ship!

I have honestly owned the truth, and
confessed to the human infirmity under suffering
of myself, my passengers, and my crew. I
have earned, therefore, as I would fain hope,
the right to record it to the credit of all, that
the men, the moment they set eyes on the
ship, poured out their whole hearts in
humble thanksgiving to the Divine Mercy which
had saved them from the very jaws of death.
They did not wait for me to bid them do this;
they did it of their own accord, in their own
language, fervently, earnestly, with one will
and one heart.

We had hardly made the ship out—a fine
brigantine, hoisting English colours—before
we observed that her crew suddenly hove her
up in the wind. At first we were at a loss
to understand this; but as we drew nearer,
we discovered that she was getting the Surf-
boat (which had kept ahead of us all through
the night) alongside of her, under the lee
bow. My men tried to cheer when they saw
their companions in safety, but their weak
cries died away in tears and sobbing.

In another half hour we, too, were alongside
of the brigantine.

From this point, I recollect nothing very
distinctly. I remember faintly many loud
voices and eager faces;—I remember fresh
strong willing fellows, with a colour in their
cheeks, and a smartness in their movements
that seemed quite preternatural to me at that
time, hanging over us in the rigging of the
brigantine, and dropping down from her sides
into our boat;—I remember trying with my
feeble hands to help them in the difficult and
perilous task of getting the two poor women
and the Captain on board;—I remember one
dark hairy giant of a man swearing that it
was enough to break his heart, and catching
me in his arms like a child—and from that
moment I remember nothing more with the
slightest certainty for over a week of time.

When I came to my own senses again,
in my cot on board the brigantine my first
inquiries were naturally for my fellow-
sufferers. Two—a passenger in the Long-boat,
and one of the crew of the Surf-boat—
had sunk in spite of all the care that could
be taken of them. The rest were likely, with
time and attention, to recover. Of those
who have been particularly mentioned in
this narrative, Mrs. Atherfield had shown
signs of rallying the soonest; Miss Coleshaw,
who had held out longer against exhaustion,
was now the slower to recover. Captain
Ravender, though slowly mending, was still
not able to speak or to move in his cot
without help. The sacrifices for us all which
this good man had so nobly undergone, not
only in the boat, but before that, when he
had deprived himself of his natural rest on
the dark nights that preceded the wreck of
the Golden Mary, had sadly undermined his
natural strength of constitution. He, the
heartiest of all, when we sailed from England,
was now, through his unwearying devotion
to his duty and to us, the last to recover, the
longest to linger between life and death.

My next questions (when they helped me on
deck to get my first blessed breath of fresh
air) related to the vessel that had saved us.
She was bound to the Columbia river—a long
way to the northward of the port for which we
had sailed in the Golden Mary. Most
providentially for us, shortly after we had lost sight
of the brigantine in the shades of the evening,
she had been caught in a squall, and had
sprung her foretopmast badly. This accident
had obliged them to lay-to for some hours,
while they did their best to secure the spar,
and had warned them, when they continued
on their course, to keep the ship under easy
sail through the night. But for this
circumstance we must, in all human probability,
have been too far astern when the morning
dawned, to have had the slightest chance
of being discovered.

Excepting always some of the stoutest of
our men, the next of the Long-boat’s company
who was helped on deck was Mrs. Atherfield.
Poor soul! when she and I first looked at
each other, I could see that her heart went
back to the early days of our voyage, when
the Golden Lucy and I used to have our
game of hide-and-seek round the mast. She
squeezed my hand as hard as she could with
her wasted trembling fingers, and looked up
piteously in my face, as if she would like to
speak to little Lucy’s playfellow, but dared
not trust herself—then turned away quickly
and laid her head against the bulwark, and
looked out upon the desolate sea that was
nothing to her now but her darling’s grave.
I was better pleased when I saw her later in
the day, sitting by Captain Ravender’s cot;
for she seemed to take comfort in nursing
him. Miss Coleshaw soon afterwards got
strong enough to relieve her at this duty;
and, between them, they did the Captain such
a world of good, both in body and spirit, that
he also got strong enough before long to come
on deck, and to thank me, in his old generous
self-forgetful way, for having done my duty—
the duty which I had learnt how to do by his
example.

Hearing what our destination had been
when we sailed from England, the captain of