Our sail hung motionless, and we seemed to stand still and take it.  Our companions were soon roused from their abstraction by the very unpleasant circumstances, and we hastily took counsel together.

“Unship the mast,” says Tom, “and over with your oars.”

We obeyed our captain sulkily, and soon were moving on again.  We pulled away for an hour or so, drenched with the rain, which seemed to come down faster than ever, and were about as miserable and down-cast a pack of wretches as ever lived; for there is nothing like a good ducking (to use the common expression) to take the life and spirit out of a man, not to mention the other discomforts that attended our situation.

Silently we rowed, and not a sound was heard above the plashing of the rain upon the surface of the sea, and the regular stroke of the oars.

“It’s very strange that we don’t reach old Point Shirley,” says Tom, who had been on the look out for this landmark during the last half-hour.

“Very strange,” said we, and pulled away as before.

Thus passed another half-hour in silent, ceaseless occupation, when, from the mere force of habit, I dipped my hand over the boat’s gunwale, with the hope of cooling my blistered palm in the salt water.  Judge of my surprise, when I found my hand immersed in thick black mud.

“By Jove, fellows,” cried I, “we’re floored!”

There was no mistaking the fact; we were aground.  At that instant the moon burst out from between the drifting clouds, and, as if in derision, threw a streak of light over our melancholy position.  There we were, high and dry on a bank of mud, a scooped furrow on each side of us attesting the frantic efforts of our oarsmen to get a headway, and a long wake, ten feet in extent, marking our distance from the sea behind us.  Such was our position as the moon revealed it to us.  We looked dolefully in one another’s faces for three minutes; then a grim smile gradually stole over Tom’s expressive countenance, as he slowly ejaculated, “Point Shirley it is!” when the ludicrous side of the matter seemed to occur to each of us simultaneously, and we indulged ourselves with a roar of laughter,—­the first since we had left Nahant.

Of course, nothing could be done under the circumstances; but we must wait patiently for the rising of the tide to float us off.  So we sat there in our wet garments until the dead of night, when our boat gradually lifted herself off and we started again, and finally arrived at Braman’s early in the morning.

The moral of this tale may be summed up in a single word,—­TEMPERANCE.

FROM THE PAPERS OF REGINALD RATCLIFFE, ESQ.