d spectators,
cold and pitiless as it seemed to me, in the strangeness and forlornness
of my condition--Arcturus, and the Ursas, great and little, and Lyra,
and the Corona Borealis, Berenice, and Hydra, and Cassiopea's chair;
these and many more. I marked them all with a calm scrutiny that belongs
to terror in some phases. The stars seemed mocking eyes that
night--smiling and safe in heaven--the moon, a cold and cruel enemy with
her vapory train, so grandly sailing across the cloudless heaven--so
careless of our fate--the wreck of a ruined world as many deem
her--veiling in light her inward desolation.

A faint and vapory comet lurked on the horizon--like a ghastly
messenger--scarcely discernible to the human eyes, yet vaguely ominous
and suggestive--a spirit-ship it might be--watching in silence to hear
away the souls of those lost at sea!

There was deep stillness--unbroken, save by the lapping and plashing
waters. Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away;
and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother,
and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the
name of my young companion), were, for a season, lost alike in sleep.

Food had been distributed--prayer had been offered--all seemed favorable
so far to our preservation. We were on the track of voyage--the pathway
of ships--and the sea was tranquil as a summer lake; up to this point,
the arm of God had been extended over us almost visibly. Would He
forsake us now? I questioned thus, and yet I could not, dare not, hope
as others hoped!

The morning came; I woke, aroused by Salva's song, from troubled sleep;
and, as I rose to a sitting posture, a troop of sea-birds that had been
swooping overhead, fled with a fiend-like screaming.

The mother and child were already consuming their scant allowance of
food. Ada Greene was standing self-poised, swaying like a slender reed
with the motion of the raft, so as never to lose her balance, like a
young acrobat, with her folded arms, her floating hair, and fair Aurora
face, uplifted to the day.

Over the raft were scattered groups of men taking their morning meal;
but, as before, the stalwart form of Christian Garth was at the helm, or
rather, mast and rudder merged in one, which he controlled with calm,
sagacious power.

"Is there a ship in the distance, that you gaze so earnestly?" I asked
of the young girl as I put back my hair that had clustered thickly ove