the second mate has found me out, and come and emptied two or three buckets of salt water over me, and set me off striking out as if I was swimming, for I'd be fancying in my sleep, you see, that the vessel had got on a reef, and was filling and going fast to the bottom.

"But the worst of all, lad," the sailor went on, when he had done puffing away at his pipe, so as to rekindle its half-extinguished fire, "is to be roused out of your sleep with the bo's'ain's whistle ringing in your ears, and the cry of 'A man overboard! a man overboard!' shouted on every side."

"Ah! that must be terrible indeed," shuddered Mrs. Franklin, as she covered her face with her palms in horror at the thought.

Little Ben, however, sat with his mouth open, staring up in the captain's face, and mute with eagerness to hear the story he had to tell. The father and uncle, too, said not a word, for they were loth to weaken the impression that the captain's simple narrative was evidently making on the sea-crazed boy.

"Ay, ay, mother," Captain Holmes proceeded, "it is terrible, I can assure you, to rush on deck in the darkness of night, when even your halfwakened senses tell you that there is nothing but a boundless watery desert round about the ship, and to find the canvas beating furiously against the masts, as the sails are put suddenly aback to check the way upon the vessel. Then, as you fly instinctively to the ship's side, you see, perhaps, some poor fellow struggling with the black waves, and, strange to say, apparently swimming as hard as he can away from the vessel itself before it is well brought to, for one forgets, at the moment, you see, the motion of the ship; and so, as it dashes past the wretched man in the water, it seems as if he, in the madness of his fright, was

hurrying away from the hull rather than the hull from him. Who is it? who is it?' cry a score of voices at once. Tisdale,' answers one. 6 'No, no, it's Swinton,' says another. 'I tell you it's Markham,' shouts a third; he fell from the main chains as he was drawing a bucket of water;' and while this goes on, some one, more thoughtful than the rest, runs to the starn and cuts adrift the life buoy that is always kept hanging there over the taffrel. Then, as the buoy strikes the water, the blue light that is attached to it takes fire, and the black mass of waves is lighted up for yards round with a pale phosphoric glow. But scarcely has this been done before some half dozen brave fellows have rushed to the davits, and jumping into the cutter over the ship's quarter, lowered the boat, with themselves in it, down into the sea. The next minute the oars are heard in the silence of the night to rattle quickly in the rullocks, while the cox'ain cries aloud,' Give way, boys, give way!' and the hazy figure of the receding boat is seen to glide like a shadow toward the now distant light of the life buoy dancing on the water. Then how the sailors crowd about the gangway, and cluster on the poop, peering into the darkness, which looks doubly dark from the very anxiety of the gazers to see farther into it. The sight of the sea, Ben, miles away from land on a starless night, is always terrible enough, for then the dark ring of water encompassing the lonely vessel looks like a vast black pool, and the sky, with its dull dome of clouds, like a huge overhanging vault of lead. But when you know, lad, that one of your own shipmates is adrift in that black pool-where there is not even so much as a rock, remember, to cling to-and battling for very life with the great waste of waters round about him, why, even the roughest sailor's bosom

is touched with a pity that makes the eyes smart again with something like a tear. You may fancy, then, how the seamen watch the white boat, as it keeps searching about in the pale light of the distant buoy, and how the crowd at the ship's side cry first, Now they see him yonder;' and next, as the cutter glides away in another direction, 'No, they're on the wrong track yet, lads;' and then how the men on board discuss whether the poor fellow could swim or not, and how long he could keep up in the water; until at length the buoy-light fades, and even the figure of the cutter itself suddenly vanishes from the view. Nothing then remains but to listen in terrible suspense for the pulse of the returning oars; and as the throbbing of the strokes is heard along the water, every heart beats with eagerness to learn the result. "What cheer, boys, what cheer?' cries the officer, as the boat's crew draw up alongside the vessel once more, and every neck is craned over the side to see whether the poor fellow lies stretched at the bottom of the cutter. And when the ugly news is told that the body even has not been found (for that is the usual fate in the dark), you can form, perhaps, some faint idea, Ben, of the gloom that comes over the whole crew. 'Whose turn is it to be next-who is to be left like that poor fellow fighting with the ocean in the dark? What became of him? is he still clinging to the spar that was thrown to him, struggling and shrieking to the ship as he sees the cabin lights sailing from his sight? or was he seized by some shark lurking in the ship's wake, and dragged under as soon as he struck the waves? Who can say? And the very mystery gives a greater terror to such an end."

"The Lord have mercy on the lost one's soul," sighed Benjamin's mother, as she hugged her boy

close to her knees, grateful even to thanksgiving that he had escaped so ghastly a doom. As for Ben himself, his eyes were glazed with tears, and as he still looked up in the captain's face, the big drops kept rolling over his long lashes till his little waistcoat was dappled with the stains.

The good-natured captain did not fail to note how deeply the lad had been touched with the story, and jerking his head on one side toward the boy, so as to draw the father's attention to the youngster, he indulged in one of his habitual chuckles as he said, "Come, come, Ben, swab the decks. You haven't heard half of the perils of a sailor's life yet. Ah! you lads think a long voyage at sea is as pleasant as a half hour's cruise in the summer time; so I did once; but a few weeks in the middle of the ocean, where even the sight of a gull, or a brood of Mother Carey's chickens seems a perfect Godsend in the intense solitude of the great desert about you, and where the same everlasting ring of the horizon still pursues you day after day, till the sense of the distance you have to travel positively appals the mind-a few weeks of such a life as this, lad, is sufficient to make the most stubborn heart turn back to home and friends, and to pray God in the dead of the night, when there is nothing but the same glistening cloud of stars set in the same eternal forms to keep one company, that he may be spared to clasp all those he loves to his bosom once again. You think a sailor, youngster, a thoughtless dare-devil of a fellow, with hardly a tender spot to his nature-the world speaks of his heart as a bit of oak; but I can tell you, boy, if you could hear the yarns that are spun during the dog-watches on the fo'cas'l, there is hardly a tale told that isn't homeward bound, as we say, and made up of the green scenes of life rather

than the ugly perils at sea. Ay! and what's more, Ben, if we could but know the silent thoughts of every heart on deck during the stillness of the middle watch, I'd wager there is not one among them that isn't away with mother, sister, or sweetheart, prattling all kinds of fond and loving things to them. Your father Josiah, too, would tell you that sailors are a godless, blaspheming race; but I can tell you, lad, better than he (for I know them better), that a seaman, surrounded as he always is with the very sublimity of creationwith the great world of water by day, which seems as infinite and incomprehensible as space itself, and with the lustrous multitude of stars by night-the stars, that to a sailor are like heaven's own beacon-lights set up on the vast eternal shore of the universe, as if for the sole purpose of guiding his ship along a path where the faintest track of any previous traveler is impossible-the sailor, I say, amid such scenes as these, dwells under the very temple of the Godhead himself, and shows in the unconquerable superstition of his naturedespite his idle and unmeaning oaths-how deeply he feels that every minute of his perilous life is vouchsafed him, as it were, through the mercy of the All-merciful."

The pious brothers bent their heads in reverence at the thoughts, while the mother looked tenderly and touchingly toward her son-in-law, and smiled as if to tell him how pleased she was to find that even he, sailor as he was, had not forgotten the godly teaching of his Puritan parents.

For a moment or two there was a marked silence among the family. The captain had touched the most solemn chord of all in their heart, and they sat for a while rapt in the sacred reverie that filled their mind like the deep-toned vibration of "a passing bell."