his position was quickly forced upon him. A dead
calm now prevailed. Henry gazed eagerly, wistfully round the horizon.
It was an unbroken line; not a speck that resembled a sail was to be
seen. Remembering for the first time that his low raft would be quite
invisible at a very short distance, he set about erecting a flag. This
was easily done. Part of his red shirt was torn off and fastened to a
light spar, the end of which he stuck between the logs. Having set up
his signal of distress he sat down beside it, and, drawing part of the
sail over his shoulders, leaned on the broken part of the bulwark, and
pondered his forlorn condition.

It was a long, sad reverie into which poor Henry Stuart fell that
evening. Hope did not, indeed, forsake his breast--for hope is strong
in youth; but he was too well acquainted with the details of a sailor's
life and risks to be able to shut his eyes to the real dangers of his
position. He knew full well that if he should be cast on any of the
inhabited islands of the South Seas (unless it might be one of the very
few that had at that time accepted the Gospel) he would certainly be
killed by the savages, whose practice it is to slay and eat all
unfortunates who chance to be wrecked and cast upon their shores. But
no islands were in sight, and it was possible that he might be left to
float on the boundless ocean until the slow and terrible process of
starvation did its work, and wore away the life which he felt to be so
fresh and strong within him.

When he thought of this he shuddered, and reverted, almost with a
feeling of pleasure, to the idea that another storm might spring up ere
long, and by dashing his frail raft to pieces, bring his life to a
speedy termination. His hopes were not very clear even to his own mind.
He did indeed hope, because he could not help it; but what it was that
he hoped for would have puzzled him to state. A passing ship finding
him in a part of the Pacific where ships were not wont to pass was,
perhaps, among the least animating of all his hopes.

But the thoughts that coursed through the youth's brain that night were
not centred alone upon the means or the prospects of deliverance. He
thought of his mother,--her gentleness, her goodness, her unaccountable
partiality for Gascoyne; but more than all, he thought of her love for
himself. He thought, too, of his former life--his joys, his sorrows,
and his sins. As he remembered these last, his sou