“I made out the vessel with my glass very easily from the deck, but paid no more attention to the matter until I came up from breakfast, an hour later.  Not a ripple was stirring, nor a ghost of a breath of wind, but the two ships were several miles nearer, and evidently approaching, though their relative position was somewhat different.  She was slowly drifting on one current, and we as slowly on another diagonally across her track.  The stranger was a large Clyde-built ship, and carried far more canvas than was necessary in a calm, but I thought she might be drying her sails.  I was waiting for her to get within hail, but her captain anticipated me and hailed first.

“‘Ship ahoy!’ came over the water, ‘What ship is that?’

“The Ariadne, Alford master, from Cape Town for Portsmouth.  What ship is that?’ I replied.

“’The Ellen, Alford master, from Liverpool for Cape Town.  Will send a boat aboard with letters for home.’

“The coincidence of names had evidently not been noticed, or produced no impression.  But I saw it all in a moment, and I had to grasp the mizzen-backstay to keep from falling.  My brother John, whom I had not seen or heard from for nearly fifteen years, had drifted across my way on the vast and pathless ocean!  Ah, how often since have I asked myself if a Providence could be clearer—­if this, with all its consequences to my after-life, could have been had not He who keepeth the winds as His treasures and measures the oceans in the hollow of His hand so ordered it for the furtherance of His own wise and beneficent will!  Not a thought of anger toward my brother crossed my mind—­not a solitary harsh memory of the past.  My heart yearned to him with a tender and womanly love, and the only shade on the brightness of my joy was the slight doubt whether he would feel thus toward me.  The order had already been passed on the Ellen to lower away a boat, and my voice sounded husky and unnatural as I shouted back an invitation to her master to board me in person.  I recognized John with the aid of my glass as he returned a hearty ‘Ay, ay!’ and dropped lightly from the futtock-shrouds into the boat.  In ten minutes he lay alongside of my vessel, and in two more stood upon the deck.  I remember well how my heart beat and my tongue refused its office as he stepped forward to greet his stranger host; how he stopped suddenly as if frozen to the deck when he looked full in my face; how his whole frame trembled and his cheeks grew ashy pale as he almost whispered, ‘Joseph?’

“‘John!’

“And then we were clasped in each other’s arms and sobbed like children, while each hid his face on his brother’s shoulder.

“Kelson told me afterward how the rough seamen gazed at us for a while in astonishment, and then, with a delicacy of feeling which even such unrefined natures can sometimes exhibit, moved quietly off and left us unobserved; but I forgot for a while that there was any one else on the ship besides my new-found brother and myself.  It was full five minutes before either of us could utter a word, and then, after a few brief expressions of surprise and pleasure, John sent word to his first officer that he would spend the day on the Ariadne, and giving our orders to keep the ships together, which was easy enough now that both were in the same current, we retired together to my cabin.