clouds, as if he sought
to forget his terrible position in contemplating the glories of heaven.
But earth claimed the chief share of his thoughts. While he rowed with
slow unflagging strokes during these calm morning hours, he did indeed
think of Eternity; of the time he had mis-spent on earth; of the sins he
had committed, and of the salvation through Jesus Christ he had for so
many years neglected or refused to accept.

But invariably these thoughts diverged into other channels: he thought
of the immediate danger that menaced himself and his son; of death from
thirst and its terrible agonies--the beginning of which even at that
moment were affecting him in the old familiar way of a slight desire to
drink! He thought, too, of the fierce man in the bow of the boat who
evidently sought his life--why, he could not tell; but he surmised that
it must either be because he had become deranged, or because he wished
to get all the food in the boat to himself, and so prolong for a few
days his miserable existence. Finally, his thoughts reverted to his
cottage home, and he fancied himself sitting in the old chimney-corner
smoking his pipe and gazing at his wife and Tottie, and his household
goods.

"I'll maybe never see them agin," he murmured sadly.

For some minutes he did not speak, then he again muttered, while a
grieved look overspread his face, "An' they'll never know what's come o'
me! They'll go on thinkin' an' thinkin', an' hopin' an' hopin' year
after year, an' their sick hearts'll find no rest. God help them!"

He looked up into the bright heavens, and his thoughts became prayer.

Ah! reader, this is no fancy sketch. It is drawn after the pattern of
things that happen every year--every month--almost every week during the
stormy seasons of the year. Known only to Him who is Omniscient are the
multitudes of heartrending scenes of protracted agony and dreary death
that are enacted year by year, all unknown to man, upon the lonely sea.
Now and then the curtain of this dread theatre is slightly raised to us
by the emaciated hand of a "survivor," and the sight, if we be
thoughtful, may enable us to form a faint conception of those events
that we never see. We might meditate on those things with advantage.
Surely _Christians_ ought not to require strong appeals to induce them
to consider the case of those "who go down into the sea in ships, who do
business in the great waters!" And here let me whisper a word to