ship still lay there in rain and fog, when
she brought it to a close.

The condition of the _Anne_ and her passengers was little to be envied.
In the steerage, the provisions of the emigrants were nearly exhausted,
and the allowance of execrable water was diminished to a pint a day per
head. Famine already began to stare them in the face. They had been six
weeks at sea, and the poorer emigrants had only provided necessaries for
that period. The Captain was obliged to examine the stores which still
remained, and to charge the people to make the most sparing use of them
until they made land.

The improvident, by this time, were utterly destitute, and were fed by
the Captain, who made them pay what little they could towards their
support. This, Mr. Lootie told them, was an act of tyranny, for the
Captain was bound to feed them, as long as he had a biscuit in the ship.
Indeed, he lost no opportunity of fostering dissentions between Boreas
and his people; and the difficult position in which the old sailor was
placed was rendered doubly so, by the mischievous and false
representations of this base-minded man.

The poor emigrants grew discontented, as their wants daily increased,
and had no longer spirits to dance and enjoy themselves; yet some sort
of excitement seemed absolutely necessary, to keep their minds from
preying upon themselves and each other.

Now would have been the time for Mr. S----to have proved his Christian
ministry, and tried by his advice, and the gentle application of that
unerring balsam for all diseases of mind and body, the Word of God, to
reconcile these poor people to their situation, and teach them to bear
with fortitude the further trials to which they might be exposed. But at
this critical period of the voyage, he kept aloof, and seldom made his
appearance upon the deck, or if he did steal out for a constitutional
promenade, he rarely exchanged a salutation with the passengers.

Not so Mr. Lootie. The little brown man had roused himself from his
lair, and was all alive. He might constantly be seen near the
forecastle, surrounded by a set of half-famished young fellows, enjoying
a low species of gambling, well known to school-boys as "Pitch and
Toss," "_Chuck Farthing_," and other equally elegant terms, quite worthy
of the amusement.

There are some minds so base, that they only require a combination of
circumstances, to show to what depths of meanness they can stoop. Mr.
Lootie's was a mind