again, half smothered in the wild abyss.

I had been overboard half an hour before I caught sight of the French
frigate. When at last I beheld her, I could scarcely restrain a cry of
joy. She was drifting rapidly toward me, and would pass within hail.
How beautiful she looked! Her symmetrical hull, that floated buoyantly
as some wild-fowl: her tall spars, unrelieved by a single bit of
canvas, except the close-reefed maintop-sail under which she was
lying-to: these, penciled against the horizon, formed together a
picture of grace and beauty unsurpassed. Now she would pitch
head-foremost into the sea; now slowly rise dripping from the deluge.
Here and there a look-out was visible dotting her rigging. As she
swung, pendulum-like, the wild and whirling clouds that rapidly
traversed the distant sky seemed one moment to stand still, and then
to speed past her with accelerated velocity. In the midst of peril as
I was I still felt all the charm of this picture.

Suddenly I reflected--what if I should miss the frigate? There were
other vessels in sight, but none in my track, for by this time I could
calculate, with some approach to accuracy, the direction of my drift.
Again the thought of my mother came up to me. I was her only son--her
almost sole hope--the comfort and darling of her old age. Perhaps even
now she was thinking of me. I seemed to see her silver hair, and hear
her mild voice once more. Then the vision of that gray head bowed in
grief arose. I beheld her in the weeds of deep mourning, bent in body
and prostrated in mind. They had told her that her child had been lost
overboard months ago, and was now a thousand fathom in the sea. I
groaned audibly. God knows, even in that awful hour, it was less of
myself than of my mother I thought!

I was now rapidly approaching the frigate.

"Hillo!--hil-lo!" I cried, waving my arm above my head, as I rose on
the crest of a wave.

I had but an instant to watch the effect of my cry, before I was
submerged again. But there was time enough to assure me that I had not
been heard.

I noticed, with terrible misgivings, that my voice was much weaker
than it had been half an hour before. Was I so soon becoming
exhausted? At this rate, an hour more would probably extinguish life.

This idea filled me with alarm, and as I gained the crest of the next
billow, I made a desperate exertion to shout both louder and quicker.

"Hillo!--hillo!--hillo-o-o!" I frantically cried.

I was s