each fancied the last man would be taken. Yet we
scarcely seemed to move: the ship appeared as far as ever from us. We
were both powerful swimmers, and both of us swam in the French way
called _la brasse_, or hand over hand, in English. There was something
the matter with the boat's falls, and they could not lower her.

"He sees you now!" was shouted; "he is after you!" Oh the agony of that
moment! I thought of every thing at the same instant, at least so it
seemed to me then. Scenes long forgotten rushed through my brain with
the rapidity of lightning, yet in the midst of this I was striking out
madly for the ship. Each moment I fancied I could feel the pilot-fish
touching me, and I almost screamed with agony. We were now not ten yards
from the ship: fifty ropes were thrown to us; but, as if by mutual
instinct, we swam for the same.

"Hurra! they are saved!--they are alongside!" was shouted by the eager
crew. We both grasped the rope at the same time: a slight struggle
ensued: I had the highest hold. Regardless of every thing but my own
safety, I placed my feet on the black's shoulders, scrambled up the
side, and fell exhausted on the deck. The negro followed roaring with
pain, for the shark had taken away part of his heel. Since then, I have
never bathed at sea; nor, I believe, has Sambo been ever heard again to
assert that he would swim after a shark if he met one in the water.

[From Howitt's Country Year-Book.]

THE TWO THOMPSONS.

By the wayside, not far from the town of Mansfield--on a high and heathy
ground, which gives a far-off view of the minster of Lincoln--you may
behold a little clump of trees, encircled by a wall. That is called
THOMPSON'S GRAVE. But who is this Thompson; and why lies he so far from
his fellows? In ground unconsecrated; in the desert, or on the verge of
it--for cultivation now approaches it? The poor man and his wants spread
themselves, and corn and potatoes crowd upon Thompson's grave. But who
is this Thompson; and why lies he here?

In the town of Mansfield there was a poor boy, and this poor boy became
employed in a hosier's warehouse. From the warehouse his assiduity and
probity sent him to the counting-house; from the counting-house, abroad.
He traveled to carry stockings to the Asiatic and the people of the
south. He sailed up the rivers of Persia, and saw the tulips growing
wild on their banks, with many a lily and flower of our proudest
gardens. He traveled in Spain