d to
discuss sundry other equally important topics.

As the good ship Bristol Trader was lazily rolling along in a southerly
direction, with a light breeze and fine weather, and in the latitude of
about thirty-nine or forty north, she fell in with the wreck of a
schooner, of about eighty or ninety tons burthen, dismasted and
apparently half full of water, in which most unpleasant situation she
did not appear long to have been. The Bristol Trader hove to, and sent
her boat alongside, in hopes of obtaining something valuable from the
wreck, either cargo, or provisions, or rigging--if a wreck yields
nothing else, there is always plenty of fish around it. As the boat
approached, the attention of the crew was attracted by the appearance of
some person on board, who made the most animated and intelligible signs
to them to come alongside. The boat's crew redoubled their exertions,
and, upon coming on board, found a boy of about fourteen years, the only
living human being. The poor little fellow seemed almost exhausted with
fatigue and hunger; but being carried on board the ship and refreshed,
he informed his deliverers that his name was George Allerton--that the
schooner belonged to a port in New England, and was homeward bound from
Fayal with a quantity of wine and fruit--that she had been capsized, in
a sudden and violent squall, three days previous, when all the crew but
himself and one other were swept overboard--that she had righted after
cutting away the masts, but with a great deal of water in the hold, and
that the other man had accidentally fallen overboard, and was drowned.

It happened that the owner of the ship, Mr. Effingham, was on board. He
was going to Rio de Janeiro, partly on account of his health, but
chiefly to look after and secure a large amount of property belonging to
the firm of which he was senior partner, and which was jeopardised by
certain disturbances in Brazil. Like all passengers on board a ship, he
could find but little or nothing to do to pass away the time, and being
a married man and a father, his sympathies and good feelings were
powerfully excited and strongly attracted towards this "waif of the
sea," their new passenger. The boy, on the other hand, to a very
handsome face added a mild and amiable disposition, and, like all
New-England boys, an education vastly superior to boys of the same age
and standing in Great Britain. George's parents were respectable in some
sort--that is to say, t