making a merry dance of it." No sooner had he uttered these words than a crash that seemed the very bursting of the heavens, accompanied by an intense and blinding light, threw us all into a state of momentary stupefaction. The maintopmast was shivered, and with its encumbering rigging fell over to leeward. The stupendous thunderclap produced a sudden calm. Hitherto, the roaring of the winds had prevented my hearing the dull, monotonous, yet angry dashing of the waves; the whole surface of the sea seemed now suddenly imbued with the voice of countless multitudes, and the moaning came up from the face of the ocean near and far, like the groans of a sinful world from their graves on the awful day of resurrection. In dreadful contrast to this universal and harrowing clamour below, all was again dark and unnaturally still above.

"All hands up foresail-clear wreck!" shouted the mate. "Now's the time-oh, for half a dozen good hands-up-up!" but before the first man of the watch below had shown his shrinking head above the hatchway, the tempest renewed its fury with a redoubled vengeance, but from nearly an opposite quarter, throwing the foresail dead aback. In an instant the brig had terrific stern way, the wheel span round, and the man at the helm was very nearly tossed overboard by the shock, whilst the rudder was jammed hard the wrong way, which counteracted the effect that the backed foresail and the inclination of the foreyard would have naturally had to make her pay off to port. The mate and myself first flew to the wheel, but we could not move it. In less than a minute the dead lights of the cabin windows were driven in, the cabin filled with water, and Mr. Tomkins, our drunken master, was washed out of his cot, and up the companion hatchway in his shirt.

The wretch was despicable in his fears. He ran about helplessly wringing his hands, and beseeching God to forgive him. He made no effort, he gave no orders-no one regarded him. The vessel all this time going furiously astern. The water was now pouring into her from the cabin windows, and she was filling fast-no staying below for the skulkers. The cold waves washed them out of their hammocks.

"All hands forward," shouted Gavel, "we must cut away the foremast-it is our only chance. Quick, quick, my lads,—come along, Troughton. Shall we leave the bewildered sot to his fate?" pointing to the master. "The mast will fall upon and crush him."

"Who is the murderer in thought now, Gavel? No." So we hurried him with us on the forecastle. The mate seized an axe, and a very large and active black fellow another. Gavel cut away at the fore, and the negro at the foretopmast stay, and, in less than half a minute the whole of her masts lay fore and aft upon the deck. The effect of this manœuvre was instantaneous. The brig heeled round immediately and presented her broadside to the wind, and thus our lives were, for the present, saved.

When we scrambled aft, to add to our misfortunes, we found the rudder wrenched from the pintles, and, held on by the rudder chains, dashing about under the counter. After a few ineffectual attempts to secure it, it was cut adrift lest it should beat a hole in the vessel's side. "She is half full of water:-all hands to the pumps." I just gave one passing thought to my father's dry goods, and stripping to the waist,

took my spell, and gloriously I worked. As we freed the vessel from the water rapidly, we had no reason to apprehend that we had sprung a leak. About midnight, there was only six inches in the pump well, and, as no immediate danger was threatened, Gavel came up to me and said with a grim courtesy, "Well, Master Troughton, I can't but say, that you have proved yourself a man to-night; and I am not ashamed to acknowledge, that I am heartily sorry that I shoved you to leeward. I suppose that I must not offer my hand to a gentleman born like yourself, but I will say this, that I am heartily sorry that you ever embarked aboard this craft-for she is doomed. However, let me recommend you to go and turn in. The steward will help you to a dry suit; make yourself comfortable and your mind easy; for, depend upon it, we shall see how each other can meet death before many days are past and gone."

I took his advice, but not his proffered hand. I refused it from no motives of malice, but because my pride would not permit me yet to think that I had given any very great proofs of manliness. When I reached the cabin, I found the carpenter had just finished securing the dead-lights, and that the steward and the cabin boy had made my berth tolerably dry. The water that had rushed into the cabin when the brig had stern way had not penetrated into my trunks, so I easily contrived to get into a complete suit of dry clothes. My sea-sickness had entirely disappeared, and I was never troubled with it again.

The master had also dressed himself, and with great assiduity was again getting brutally drunk. To his maudlin intreaties for me to join him in his debasing debauch, I returned only a contemptuous refusal, and, breathing vengeance against me, and imprecating every thing possible and impossible, he was, in the space of a short half hour lifted into his cot in a state of the most beastly insensibility.

Before I went to sleep I made a vow, that if ever I reached Spain in safety, the Jane was the last vessel that Josiah Tomkins should ever command, though whether I would intercede for James Gavel, I had not yet made up my mind. I soon fell asleep, and, contrary to my expectation, I slept soundly, and I awoke late [the next morning in health, and not only refreshed, but almost in good spirits.

It was nine o'clock before I again got on deck. The men were slowly and doggedly clearing away the wreck that lay all about the decks, and the surly mate was kicking and handspiking them with a savageness that immediately recalled the unfavourable impressions that his activity and gallantry of the preceding night had partly obliterated. However, I did not think myself justified in using any interference, for the crew, perhaps, deserved the castigations that were lavished upon them so unsparingly. To amuse myself, having cleared away the rubbish and the remnants of rope from a small space under the lee of the quarter-deck bulwark, I called my friend Bounder, the large Newfoundland dog, to me, and began to propitiate his good graces by commencing a hearty and rough game of romps. My overtures were most graciously received, and my tokens of friendship most warmly returned.

The weather had now settled into a steady and staggering gale (a connexion of adjectives well understood) directly from the westward. We were completely at its mercy, and lay, as the seamen say, like

a log upon the water. We had not a stick standing, with the exception of the bowsprit: yet all but the superstitious and sullen mate now entertained sanguine hopes that we should reach port in safety. Indeed, with the exception of the gale and the wreck before us, everything wore a cheerful aspect. We had been driven well south, and the day was genial, the sun shining brightly out from an unclouded sky.

Notwithstanding the amenity of my disposition, I could not play with a dog for ever, and being really ennuyéed for want of occupation, I rose, and went to Mr. Gavel, and asked him, with a becoming humility, if he could not make me useful.

He repaid me by a stare of unsophisticated surprise, and then stammered out, "Willingly-most heartily; here, lend us a hand to unbend this sail-do it thus-come, we will work together, and you can thus learn to do it in a ship-shape fashion. There is the true heart of oak in your bosom after all; only, methinks that the tarry sinnet will soil those pretty long white fingers of yours. Well done by the holy-that's the true Jack way. Why, the Lord love you, they should have made a sailor of you."

"Well, you see, Gavel, how agreeable I am willing to make myself-you're improving me fast-oblige me, and let me try to improve you.

"With all my heart-I'm perfect in nothing but in seamanship." "It is in seamanship that I wish to work the improvement."

"Well, that's good-what next?-should like to hear, however." "I want to teach you how to make the most of the force, strength -I think you call it beef-that you have at your disposal-to get the most, and the quickest work out of your very ragged and grumbling crew."

"And so I do, don't I? Look at the station-book-every man knows where to go and do his duty, if he would only be man enough, and do it."

"Pardon me, Mr. Gavel, they do not work for you willingly, therefore all the work is but imperfectly done."

"Know it—the nest of lubbers! God knows, that my tongue is tired with cursing, my hand sore with hiding them."

"The very thing that I deplore-do try fair means."

"My ruffianly deportment, hah! I understand you. But I should like to prove to you that you're quite wrong."

"No, let me prove to you that I am quite right. Neither curse nor strike any of them for the next half hour-point out the offender to me-let me speak to him. If you don't like my method, you need not adopt it, I only ask as a favour that you should see it tried."

"Very well, Master Troughton, I begin to like you-go to your work. Look at that lazy, grumbling rascal, that has just thrown down his serving mallet, not only idling himself, but hindering, with his damned lawyer's tongue, all around him from working."

I went up to him, and said a few words in a conciliatory and kind tone, and when I returned to my own labour along side of the mate, to the utmost surprise of the latter, he saw the recent offender working in silence, as if for his very life, and that cheerfully too. occasion to rise and address three other culprits, and with the same

I had

beneficial effects, before my half hour of delegated authority had expired. At first, the mate was mute with astonishment, and then begged me either to give him my recipe for making men, not worth their salt, work like sailors, or else to keep my authority over them as long as we sailed together.

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It lies all in a nut-shell-teach them self-respect, by showing that you can respect them. O Gavel, do you think that there is any thing that God created in his own likeness and in yours, that he meant to be knocked about, like the brutes that perish, by his fellow man? Abuse, contumely, and blows, are not the greetings that one sinner should bestow upon another. Every one of those men that you have so inhumanly buffeted, and so impiously cursed, has, like yourself, an immortal soul. Then, for the sake of that glorious privilege, that you share with them, respect it. Yes, I know what you would say, that they are debased beings-that some of them are radically vicious, and that all of them are desperately wicked. But believe me, in the very worst of us there is much that is good-in the very best of us, there is much that is bad. Let us, Gavel, work with the good that we find in them, and depend upon it, you will find the bad that is in them rapidly decrease."

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Well, Master Troughton, you put this in a new light. I'll try your plan. Be near me as much as you can, to assist me when I am steering right, and to check me when I am in the wrong course. In payment for which, I'll undertake to make you a perfect seaman."

I agreed to the bargain, and the benefits were great and mutual. The gale continued unabated; our prospects were, in the first instance, to endeavour to make ourselves visible to some passing vessel, and thus, to receive succour; and, if this failed, to depend upon our own resources when we had got up all our jury rigging. To effect the first, we had, even on the first day after the wreck, elevated a tall spar, which we lashed to the stump of the main-mast, and on which we displayed the ensign, union downwards. But some days had now clapsed, and we were rapidly increasing our distance from the shores of Europe, and with that our chance of rescue. On the eighth day of the gale, of our latitude, which was 31°, 50', we were well assured, from solar observations, but we had no idea at all of the westing that we had made.

The captain continued in a state of drunken stupor, equally avoided by the mate and myself. The men worked cheerfully, and on the ninth day we began to attempt to get jury lower-yards across. This was on the second of April 18-, and the next day we had shipped a make-shift rudder. During all this I had laboured incessantly, under the directions of the mate, and thus imperfectly learned to rig a ship. I kept watch with him, I made myself as useful as I could in every department of a seaman's life, and thus gained invaluable knowledge. On the fifth of April the wind failed, the sea became smooth, and the weather delightful. At noon it was a perfect calm. Indeed, every thing seemed again to wear a smiling aspect. Even Mr. Tomkins, the master, felt the renovating influence of our changed condition, and kept himself sober the greatest part of the day, and was much on deck. He could not help expressing his admiration and astonishment at the improved condition and discipline of the crew. The men did

their duty with alacrity and cheerfulness. Mr. Gavel, too, had ceased bullying, swearing, and striking. The lesson of the last fortnight had been to me invaluable. It had taught me how to make use of my resources, and the full value of the beauty of that science, known to none so perfectly as to sailors, and recognised by the humble title of "Make-shift."

We had now three days of perfect calm, during which our jury rigging was completed, even to the rattling down the lower rigging. I now went aloft, laid out on the yards, and soon acquired the art of reefing and furling. I also took lessons in navigation of the mate, and learned the use of the quadrant, the sextant, and the azimuth compass. Gavel smiled sorrowfully at the ardour with which I entered into all these pursuits-but said nothing whatever to repress it. On the tenth of April a light breeze sprung up from the northward, when a consultation was held by the skipper and the mate, to which I was invited out of courtesy, to decide upon what course we should pursue. We had only shipped, when we left for England, six weeks' water and provisions-we now had been at sea nearly one month. Still there was no occasion for alarm. At length, we decided to run farther to the south, with the present fair wind, into the latitude of the Canaries, and then westward, until we made the lofty peak of Teneriffe. We did so, and next day at noon, found ourselves in the exact latitude.

In this parallel we ran on for two days, and, making no land, we began to grow alarmed. On the third day it again fell calm, and the mate and a couple of old sailors began to surmise that we had got too far to the westward, and were now in those variable climes that are always met with before the regular trade winds are reached.

This disagreeable suspicion was too surely verified the next day, by the means of an imperfectly-taken lunar observation, made by the mate. Our situation again became alarming, and we found it necessary to put the crew upon half allowance. At this there was a good deal of murmuring, which Gavel, returning to his old system, wished to allay with the handspike. I overruled him, and, with his permission, calling them all aft, I in the first place threw the whole of my private provisions into the public stock, reserving to my sole use, for the present, my wine only, and then with a few calm and firm words, I reconciled them to the necessary privations, and was rewarded with a cheer for my exertions.

These unfortunate accidents were rapidly educating, and fitting me to act hereafter with decision in those trying and singular events with which it was my ill fate to struggle for so many years. We now kept the vessel's head eastward, endeavouring to make some one of the Canaries, but we had nothing but calms, intermixed with light and baffling winds. We made no progress on the ocean, though the progressive disappearance of our stores was repid. I need not say that the mate, with whom I had entered into a strict alliance——friendship I will not call it joined heartily with me in making his private stock common with that of the rest of the crew. He and I consulted together, and we now resolved to propose to the Master, Tomkins, to follow our example. I have shown how much I despised, I hated this man, but with a prudence, the remnant, perhaps, of the former quietism of my