objects!  His comrade was then watching by the side of an almost dying wife, who had just made him the father of his first-born son.  Could Laonce summon him from that spot of his heart’s tenderest duties, to attend to the roaring guns of distress from a stranger vessel?  Impossible!  He rose, and looked out on the night.  He listened to the second signal, he wrung his hands, and, sighing, was returning to his couch again.  His wife had then risen also.  She clasped her arms round him, and a big tear stood in both her eyes, “You tell me,” said she, “that your people do not make those thunders to heaven, and to earth, till they are drowning.  You know you can save them all.  Go, Lao,”—­and she smiled; “go; and the foreign chief, after you have saved him, will give you something for me—­either a looking-glass, or a silk handkerchief.  Go, Lao.”

He wound his arms round the gentle pleader; and, almost ashamed that the father and the husband in his heart, should make him calculate between his own life and that of the gallant crew, he told her, that the tempest raged too tremendously for him to dare stemming it.  But she laughingly repulsed his caresses, accusing his fondness for her as the inducement of his assumed apprehensions; and being too long accustomed to the rashness of her own people, in braving every weather, to believe any plea of positive danger, she still persisted; saying she must have a silk handkerchief that night from yon ship, or she should think he loved his sound sleep better than he did his fond Berea.

The enthusiastic love which still warmed the faithful husband’s breast, and a third signal of distress from the struggling vessel, mastered his better judgment, and, seizing his canoe, he dashed into the foaming waves and boldly stemmed their fury to the object of his mission.  The overjoyed crew, as they heard his voice hailing them through the storm, cast out a rope, by which they hoisted him into their cracking ship.  The most rapturous acknowledgments from the captain, greeted him as soon as he jumped on the deck; and the eager seamen called him their deliverer.  He was happy! he said, he was happy in the achievement of what he had done; he had obeyed the wish of his beloved Berea, and he had survived the lashing surge.  He was happy, in the confidence that he should rescue the gallant vessel he came to take under his control.  But that hour of happiness was his last.  He took the helm in his hands; he gave the requisite directions to the seamen, for the management of the ship; and he soon steered her out of the dangers of the bay, till she rode in safety on the main ocean.  He then asked for a boat to carry him on shore, for his canoe had been crushed by an accident.  But the wind still blowing hurricanes, they would not venture the loss of one of their boats:  and during the hot contentions between him, and the ungrateful chief of the vessel he had preserved, they were driven out far to sea; whence his swimming arm, had he plunged