led from New Orleans, a gallant and
well-appointed ship, with a cargo, the major part of which consisted of
cotton. The captain was, in the usual acceptation of the term, a good
sailor; the crew were hardy and able seamen. As they crossed the
Atlantic, they had encountered the gale to which we have referred, were
driven down into the Bay of Biscay, where, as we shall hereafter
explain, the vessel was dismasted, and sprang a leak, which baffled all
their exertions to keep under. It was now five days since the frightened
crew had quitted the vessel in two of her boats, one of which had
swamped, and every soul that occupied it had perished; the fate of the
other was uncertain.

We said that the crew had deserted the vessel, but we did not assert
that every existing being had been removed out of her. Had such been the
case, we should not have taken up the reader's time in describing
inanimate matter. It is life that we portray, and life there still was
in the shattered hull thus abandoned to the mockery of the ocean. In the
_caboose_ of the _Circassian_, that is, in the cooking-house secured on
deck, and which fortunately had been so well fixed as to resist the
force of the breaking waves, remained three beings--a man, a woman, and
a child. The two first-mentioned were of that inferior race which have,
for so long a period, been procured from the sultry Afric coast, to
toil, but reap not for themselves; the child which lay at the breast of
the female was of European blood, now, indeed, deadly pale, as it
attempted in vain to draw sustenance from its exhausted nurse, down
whose sable cheeks the tears coursed, as she occasionally pressed the
infant to her breast, and turned it round to leeward to screen it from
the spray which dashed over them at each returning swell. Indifferent to
all else, save her little charge, she spoke not, although she shuddered
with the cold as the water washed her knees each time that the hull was
careened into the wave. Cold and terror had produced a change in her
complexion, which now wore a yellow, or sort of copper hue.

The male, who was her companion, sat opposite to her upon the iron range
which once had been the receptacle of light and heat, but was now but a
weary seat to a drenched and worn-out wretch. He, too, had not spoken
for many hours; with the muscles of his face relaxed, his thick lips
pouting far in advance of his collapsed cheeks, his high cheekbones
prominent as budding horns,