Our voyage had been most cheerful and prosperous, and, on Christmas day, we were within fifty leagues of port. Passengers and crew were all in the highest spirits, and the ship was alive with mirth and jollity. 3. The ship was sailing at the rate of seven knots an hour. A strong snow storm blew, but steadily and without danger; and the ship kept boldly on her course, close-reefed, and mistress of the storm. While leaning over the gunwale, admiring the water rushing by like a foaming cataract, by some unaccountable accident, I lost my balance, and, in an instant, fell overboard into the sea. 4. I remember a convulsive shuddering all over my body, and a hurried leaping of my heart, as I felt myself about to lose hold of the vessel, and afterward a sensation of the most icy chilliness, from immersion in the waves, but nothing resembling a fall or +precipitation. When below the water, I think that a momentary belief rushed across my mind, that the ship had suddenly sunk, and that I was but one of a perishing crew. I imagined that I felt a hand, with long fingers, clutching at my legs, and made violent efforts to escape, dragging after me, as I thought, the body of some drowning wretch. 5. On rising to the surface, I recollected, in a moment, what had befallen me, and uttered a cry of horror, which is in my ears to this day, and often makes me shudder, as if it were the mad shriek of another person in extremity of perilous agony. Often have I dreamed over again that dire moment, and the cry I utter in my sleep, is said to be something more horrible than a human voice. No ship was to be seen. She was gone forever. 6. The little, happy world to which, a moment before, I had belonged, had been swept by, and I felt that God had flung me at once from the heart of joy, delight, and happiness, into the utter most abyss of mortal misery and despair. Yes! I felt that the Almighty God had done this, that this was an act, a fearful act of Providence, and miserable worm that I was, I thought that the act was cruel, and a sort of wild, indefinite, objectless rage and wrath assailed me, and took for awhile, the place of that first shrieking terror. I gnashed my teeth, and cursed myself, and with bitter tears and yells, blasphemed the name of God. 7. It is true, my friend, that I did so. God forgave that wickedness. The Being, whom I then cursed, was in his tender mercy, not unmindful of me, of me, a poor, blind, miserable, mistaken But the waves dashed over me, and struck me on the face, and howled at me; and the winds yelled, and the snow beat like +drifting sand into my eyes, and the ship, the ship was gone, and there was I left to struggle, and buffet, and gasp, and sink, and worm perish, alone, unseen, and unpitied by man, and, as I thought too, by the everlasting God. 8. I tried to penetrate the surrounding darkness with my glaring eyes, that felt as if leaping from their sockets; and saw, as if by miraculous power, to a great distance through the night; but no ship; nothing but white-crested waves, and the dismal noise of thunder. 9. I shouted, shrieked, and yelled, that I might be heard by the crew, till my voice was gone, and that, too, when I knew that there were none to hear me. At last I became utterly speechless, and, when I tried to call aloud, there was nothing but a silent gasp and convulsion, while the waves came upon me like stunning blows, reiterated, and drove me along like a log of wood or a dead animal. 10. All this time, I was not conscious of any act of swimming; but I soon found that I had instinctively been exerting all my power and skill, and both were requisite to keep me alive in the tumultuous wake of the ship. Something struck me harder than a wave. What it was I knew not, but I grasped it with a passionate violence; for the hope of salvation came suddenly over me, and with a sudden transition from despair, I felt that I was rescued. 11. I had the same thought as if I had been suddenly heaved on shore by a wave. The crew had thrown overboard every thing they thought could afford me the slightest chance of escape from death, and a hencoop had drifted toward me. At once, all the stories I had ever read, of mariners miraculously saved at sea, rushed across my recollection. I had an object to cling to, which I knew would prolong my existence. 12. I was no longer helpless on the cold weltering world of waters; and the thought that my friends were thinking of me, and doing all they could for me, gave to me a wonderful courage. I may yet pass the night in the ship, I thought; and I looked round eagerly to hear the rush of her prow, or to see through the snowdrift the gleaming of her sails. 13. This was but a momentary gladness. The ship, I knew, could not be far off, but, for any good she could do me, she might as well have been in the heart of the Atlantic Ocean. Ere she could have altered her course, I must have drifted a long way to leeward, and in that dim, snowy night, how was such a speck to be seen? I saw a flash of lightning, and then, there was thunder. It was the ship firing a gun, to let me know, if still alive, that she was somewhere lying to. 14. But wherefore? I was separated from her by a dire necessity, by many thousand fierce waves, that would not let my shrieks be heard. Each succeeding gun was heard fainter and fainter, till at last, I cursed the sound that, scarcely heard above the hollow rumbling of the tempestuous sea, told me that the ship was further and further off, till she and her heartless crew had left me to my fate. 15. Why did they not send out all their boats to row round and round all that night through, for the sake of one whom they pretended to love so well? I blamed, blessed, and cursed them by fits, till emotion of every soul was my + exhausted, and I clung in sullen despair, to the wretched piece of wood, that still kept me from eternity. 16. Every thing was now seen in its absolute, dreadful reality. I was a castaway, with no hope of rescue. It was broad daylight, and the storm had ceased; but clouds lay round the horizon, and no land was to be seen. What dreadful clouds! Some black as pitch, and charged with thunder; others like cliffs of fire, and here and there all streamered over with blood. It was, indeed, a sullen, wrathful, and despairing sky. 17. The sun itself was a dull, brazen orb, cold, dead, and beamless. I beheld three ships afar off, but all their heads were turned away from me. For whole hours, they would adhere motionless to the sea, while I drifted away from them; and then a rushing wind would spring up, and carry them, one by one, into the darkness of the stormy distance. Many birds came close to me, as if to flap me with their large spreading wings, screamed round and round me, and then flew away in their strength, and beauty, and happiness. I 18. I now felt myself indeed dying. A calm came over me. prayed devoutly for forgiveness of my sins, and for all my friends. on earth. A ringing was in my ears, and I remember only the hollow fluctuations of the sea with which I seemed to be blended, and a sinking down and down an unfathomable depth, which Í thought was Death, and into the kingdom of the eternal Future. + 19. I awoke from insensibility and oblivion, with a hideous racking pain in my head and loins, and in a place of utter darkness. I heard a voice say, "Praise the Lord." My agony was dreadful, and I cried aloud. Wan, glimmering, melancholy lights, kept moving to and fro. I heard dismal whisperings, and now and then, a pale, silent ghost glided by. A hideous din was overhead, and around me the fierce dashing of the waves. Was I in the land of spirits? 20. But why try to recount the mortal pain of my recovery, the soul-humbling gratitude that took possession of my being? I vas lying in the cabin of a ship, and kindly tended by a humane and skillful man. + I had been picked up, apparently dead, and cold. The hand of God was there. Adieu, my dear friend. It is now the hour of rest, and I hasten to fall down on my knees befor the merciful Being who took pity upon me, and who, at the n' cession of our Redeemer, may, I hope, pardon all my sins. PROF. WILSON. QUESTIONS.-Narrate this story in your own language. What were the Professor's feelings when he first fell into the water? What did he imagine was clutching at his heels? How did he act upon rising to the surface? How did he escape a watery grave? Parse the first "one" in the 17th paragraph. "Try," in the 20th. Which is the principal verb of the first sentence in the 19th paragraph? What three verbs in the second sentence of the same paragraph? What two in the third ? TO TEACHERS. The teacher is once more reminded of the importance of thorough and frequent practice of the EXERCISES on ARTICULATION which are placed between the lessons in this book. The pupil should utter the elementary sounds of each difficult word before reading the sentences containing them. A few such words are placed at the head of each exercise. For example, in the next page the sounds should be uttered thus: tr-à-v-e-ld, travel'a: tr-à-cts, tracts, &c. Where several consonants come together, they shoul be uttered as one sound; as, tr, ld, cts. ARTICULATION. Travel'd, tracts, territory, transition, tragic. We travel'd through extensive tracts of territory. The transition was extreme and sudden. Proofs of the crime of an irrefragable nature car produced. The tragic nature of the scene seem'd rather attractive than repulsive. LESSON LII. PRONOUNCE Correctly.-Fool-ish, not full-ish: sud-den-ly, not suddin-ly: neither, or ny-ther: swal-low-eth, not swal-ler-eth: up-ward, not up-wud: chast-en-ing, pro. chase-ning. 2. De-vi'-ces, n. contrivances. Craft'-i-ness, n. cunning, artfulness. Grope, v. to search by feeling in the dark. 3. Tab'-er-na-cle, n. a temporary dwelling place. 1. DIVINE PROVIDENCE. CALL now, if there be any that will answer thee; For wrath killeth the foolish man, And envy slayeth the silly one. |