of stars from the
tresses of her streaming clouds, till the wonderful deep heavens sparkled
with a myriad gemmy points. The west wind going on his way sung his wild
chant amongst the cordage, and rushed among the sails as with a rush of
wings. The ship leant over like a maiden shrinking from a kiss, then,
shivering, fled away, leaping from billow to billow as they rose and
tossed their white arms about her, fain to drag her down and hold her to
ocean's heaving breast.

The rigging tautened, and the huge sails flapped in thunder as the
Harpoon sped upon her course, and all around was greatness and the
present majesty of power. Augusta looked aloft and sighed, she knew not
why. The swift blood of youth coursed through her veins, and she rejoiced
exceedingly that life and all its possibilities yet lay before her. But a
little more of that dreadful place and they would have lain behind. Her
days would have been numbered before she scarce had time to strike a blow
in the great human struggle that rages ceaselessly from age to age. The
voice of her genius would have been hushed just as its notes began to
thrill, and her message would never have been spoken in the world. But
now Time was once more before her, and oh! the nearness of Death had
taught her the unspeakable value of that one asset on which we can
rely--Life. Not, indeed, that life for which so many live--the life led
for self, and having for its principle, if not its only end, the
gratification of the desires of self; but an altogether higher life--a
life devoted to telling that which her keen instinct knew was truth, and,
however imperfectly, painting with the pigment of her noble art those
visions of beauty which sometimes seemed to rest upon her soul like
shadows from the heaven of our hones.

* * * * *

Three months have passed--three long months of tossing waters and
ever-present winds. The Harpoon, shaping her course for Norfolk, in the
United States, had made but a poor passage of it. She got into the
south-east trades, and all went well till they made St. Paul's Rocks,
where they were detained by the doldrums and variable winds. Afterwards
she passed into the north-east trades, and then, further north, met a
series of westerly gales, that ultimately drove her to the Azores, just
as her crew were getting very short of water and provisions. And here
Augusta bid farewell to her friend the Yankee skipper; for the whaler
that h