t's wife.

And he was on the ocean,
Although she knew not where,
For never a lip
Could tell of the ship,
To lighten her heart's despair.
And her babe was fading and dying;
The pulse in the tiny wrist
Was all but still,
And the brow was chill,
And pale as the white sea mist.

Jane Conquest's heart was hopeless;
She could only weep and pray
That the Shepherd mild
Would take her child
Without a pain away.
The night was dark and darker,
And the storm grew stronger still,
And buried in deep
And dreamless sleep
Lay the hamlet under the hill.

The fire was dead on the hearthstone
Within Jane Conquest's room,
And still sat she,
With her babe on her knee,
At prayer amid the gloom.
When, borne above the tempest,
A sound fell on her ear,
Thrilling her through,
For well she knew
'Twas the voice of mortal fear.

And a light leaped in at the lattice,
Sudden and swift and red;
Crimsoning all,
The whited wall,
And the floor, and the roof o'erhead.
For one brief moment, heedless
Of the babe upon her knee,
With the frenzied start
Of a frightened heart,
Upon her feet rose she.

And through the quaint old casement
She looks upon the sea;
Thank God that the sight
She saw that night
So rare a sight should be!
Hemmed in by many a billow
With mad and foaming lip,
A mile from shore,
Or hardly more,
She saw a gallant ship.

And to her horror she beheld it
Aflame from stem to stern;
For there seemed no speck
On all that wreck
Where the fierce fire did not burn;
Till the night was like a sunset,
And the sea like a sea of blood,
And the rocks and shore
Were bathed all o'er
And drenched with the gory flood.

She looked and looked, till the terror
Went creeping through every limb;
And her breath came quick,
And her heart grew sick,
And her sight grew dizzy and dim;
And her lips had lost their utterance,
For she tried but could not speak;
And her feelings found
No channel of sound
In prayer, or sob, or shriek.

Once more that cry of anguish
Thrilled through the tempest's strife,
And it stirred again
In heart and brain
The active thinking life;
And the light of an inspiration
Leaped to her brightened eye,
And on lip and brow
Was written now
A purpose pure and high.

Swiftly she turns, and softly
She crosses t