hopefulness to one another.

* * *

He who has crossed the St. Gothard will remember that below Andermatt
there is one of those Alpine gorges which reach the very utmost limits of
the sublime and terrible. The feelings of the traveller have become more
and more highly wrought at every step, until at last the naked and
overhanging precipices seem to close above his head, as he crosses a
bridge hung in mid-air over a roaring waterfall, and enters on the
darkness of a tunnel, hewn out of the rock.

What can be in store for him on emerging? Surely something even wilder
and more desolate than that which he has seen already; yet his
imagination is paralysed, and can suggest no fancy or vision of anything
to surpass the reality which he had just witnessed. Awed and breathless
he advances; when lo! the light of the afternoon sun welcomes him as he
leaves the tunnel, and behold a smiling valley--a babbling brook, a
village with tall belfries, and meadows of brilliant green--these are the
things which greet him, and he smiles to himself as the terror passes
away and in another moment is forgotten.

So fared it now with ourselves. We had been in the water some two or
three hours, and the night had come upon us. We had said farewell for
the hundredth time, and had resigned ourselves to meet the end; indeed I
was myself battling with a drowsiness from which it was only too probable
that I should never wake; when suddenly, Arowhena touched me on the
shoulder, and pointed to a light and to a dark mass which was bearing
right upon us. A cry for help--loud and clear and shrill--broke forth
from both of us at once; and in another five minutes we were carried by
kind and tender hands on to the deck of an Italian vessel.

CHAPTER XXIX: CONCLUSION

The ship was the _Principe Umberto_, bound from Callao to Genoa; she had
carried a number of emigrants to Rio, had gone thence to Callao, where
she had taken in a cargo of guano, and was now on her way home. The
captain was a certain Giovanni Gianni, a native of Sestri; he has kindly
allowed me to refer to him in case the truth of my story should be
disputed; but I grieve to say that I suffered him to mislead himself in
some important particulars. I should add that when we were picked up we
were a thousand miles from land.

As soon as we were on board, the captain began questioning us about the
siege of Paris, from which city he had assumed that we must have come,
notwiths