h help them! How I pities those
Unhappy folks on shore now!"

At length William Freeborn was relieved from his post aloft, and came
down on deck. Paul Pringle, his old friend and messmate, who had been
hunting for him through the darkness, found him at last. Paul grieved
sincerely for the news he had to communicate, and, not liking the task
imposed on him, scarcely knew how to begin.

"Bill," said he with a sigh, "you and I, boy and man, have sailed
together a good score of years, and never had a fall-out about nothing
all that time, and it goes to my heart, Bill, to say any thing that you
won't like; but it must be done--that I sees--so it's no use to have no
circumbendibus. Your missus was took very bad--very bad indeed--just in
the middle of the gale, and there was no one to send for you--and so, do
you see--"

"My wife--Molly!--oh, what has happened, Paul?" exclaimed Freeborn, not
waiting for an answer; but springing below, he rushed to the sick-bay,
as the hospital is called. The faint cry of an infant reached his ears
as he opened the door. Betty Snell, one of the other nurses, was so
busily employed with something on her knees, that she did not see him
enter. The dim light of a lantern, hanging from a beam overhead, fell
on it. He saw that it was a newborn infant. He guessed what had
happened, but he did not stop to caress it, for beyond was the cot
occupied by his wife. There she lay, all still and silent. His heart
sank within him; he gazed at her with a feeling of terror and anguish
which he had never before experienced. He took her hand. It fell
heavily by her side. He gasped for breath. "Molly!" he exclaimed at
length, "speak to me, girl--what has happened?"

There was no answer. Then he knew that his honest, true-hearted wife
was snatched from him in this world for ever. The big drops of salt
spray, which still clung to his hair and bushy beard, dropped on the
kind face of her he had loved so well, but not a tear escaped his eyes.
He gladly would have wept, but he had not for so many a long year done
such a thing, and he felt too stunned and bewildered to do so now. He
had stood as a sailor alone could stand on so unstable a foothold,
gazing on those now placid and pale unchanging features for a long
time,--how long he could not tell,--when Paul Pringle, who had followed
him to the door of the sick-bay, came up, and, gently taking him by the
shoulders, said:

"Come along, Bill; the