The burning at my stomach now departed; I experienced no pain; but a dull torpor came over me; my hands and feet became cold; I believed I was dying, and I rejoiced at the thought.  Presently I lost all thought and feeling, and lay, without sense, on a few boards, which divided me from the ocean.  In this situation, as I was afterwards informed, I was taken up by a small vessel, and carried to a seaport town.  I slowly recovered, and found that I alone, of all who were on board the vessel in which I had embarked, had escaped death.  The crew, who had departed in the boats, after murdering the captain, had met their reward—­the boats were shattered against a rock.

December Tales.

* * * * *

THE SELECTOR, AND LITERARY NOTICES OF NEW WORKS.

A STORM IN THE INDIAN SEAS.

While the sun was setting with even more than its usual brilliancy, and leaving its path marked with streaks of gold, a bird hovered over our heads, and suddenly alighted on our taffrail:  it was one of “Mother Carey’s chickens,” which by mariners are considered as harbingers of ill, and generally of a furious storm.  At a warning of this kind I did not then feel disposed to take alarm; but there were other warnings not to be slighted—­the horizon to the east presented the extraordinary appearance of a black cloud in the shape of a bow, with its convex towards the sea, and which kept its singular shape and position unchanged until nightfall.  For the period too of twenty minutes after the setting of the sun, the clouds to the north-west continued of the colour of blood; but that which most attracted our observation was, to us, a remarkable phenomenon—­the sea immediately around us, and, as far as the eye could discern by the light of the moon, appeared, for about forty minutes, of a perfectly milk white.  We were visited by two more chickens of Mother Carey, both of which sought refuge, with our first visiter, on the mainmast.  We sounded, but found no bottom at a hundred fathoms; a bucket of the water was then drawn up, the surface of which was apparently covered with innumerable sparks of fire—­an effect said to be caused by the animalculae which abound in sea-water:  it is at all times common, but the sparks are not in general so numerous, nor of such magnitude, as were those which then presented themselves.  The hand too, being dipped in the water, and immediately withdrawn, thousands of them would seem to adhere to it.  A dismal hollow breeze, which, as the night drew on, howled through our rigging, and infused into us all a sombre, melancholy feeling, increased by gathering clouds, and the altogether portentous state of the atmosphere and elements, ushered in the first watch, which was to be kept by Thomson.