He laid Mrs. N——­’s baby on her breast, and wrapped a shawl round and round her body so as to secure the child to it, and said, in the event of the boat capsizing, he would endeavour to save her and her child.  Mrs. F——­ and her boy he gave in charge to one of the sailors, and the coloured woman who was with her to the other; and they promised solemnly, in case of misadventure to the boat, to do their best to save these helpless creatures; and so they turned, as the sun was going down, the bows of the boat to the terrible shore.  They rose two of the breakers safely, but then the oar of one of the men was struck from his hand, and in an instant the boat whirled round and turned over.  Mr. C——­ instantly struck out to seize Mrs. N——­, but she had sunk, and though he dived twice he could not see her; at last, he felt her hair floating loose with his foot, and seizing hold of it, grasped her securely and swam with her to shore.  While in the act of doing so, he saw the man who had promised to save the coloured woman making alone for the beach; and even then, in that extremity, he had power of command enough left to drive the fellow back to seek her, which he did, and brought her safe to land.  The other man kept his word of taking care of Mrs. F——­, and the latter never released her grasp of her child’s wrist, which bore the mark of her agony for weeks after their escape.  They reached the sands, and Mrs. N——­’s shawl having been unwound, her child was found laughing on her bosom.  But hardly had they had time to thank God for their deliverance when Mr. C——­ fell fainting on the beach; and Mrs. F——­, who told me this, said that for one dreadful moment they thought that the preserver of all their lives had lost his own in the terrible exertion and anxiety that he had undergone.  He revived, however, and crawling a little further up the beach, they burrowed for warmth and shelter as well as they could in the sand, and lay there till the next morning, when they sought and found succour.

You cannot imagine, my dear E——­, how strikingly throughout this whole narrative the extraordinary power of Mr. C——­’s character makes itself felt,—­the immediate obedience that he obtained from women whose terror might have made them unmanageable, and men whose selfishness might have defied his control; the wise though painful firmness, which enabled him to order the boat away from the side of the perishing vessel, in spite of the pity that he felt for the many, in attempting to succour whom he could only have jeopardized the few whom he was bound to save; the wonderful influence he exercised over the poor oarsmen, whose long protracted labour postponed to the last possible moment the terrible risk of their landing.  The firmness, courage, humanity, wisdom, and presence of mind, of all his preparations for their final tremendous risk, and the authority which he was able to exercise while struggling in the foaming water for his own life and that of the woman and child he was saving, over the man who