of wreck spread from knight-head to taffrail.  The anxious captain, having descended from the upper deck a few minutes before the dire calamity, is saved to his passengers, with whom and his men he labours to make safe what remains of his noble ship.  Now more at ease in the sea, with canvas brought from the store-rooms, are the hatches and companions battened down, the splintered stancheons cleared away, and extra pumps prepared for clearing the water fast gaining in the lower hold.  Lumbering moves the heavy mass over the mounting surge; but a serious leak having sprung in the bow, consternation and alarm seem on the point of adding to the sources of danger.  “Coolness is our safeguard,” says the captain.  Indeed, the exercise of that all-important virtue when destruction threatens would have saved thousands from watery graves.

His admonition was heeded,—­all worked cheerfully, and for some time the water was kept within bounds of subjection.  As night approached the sea became calmer, a bright streak gleamed along the western horizon; hearts that had sorrowed gladdened with joy, as the murky clouds overhead chased quickly into the east and dissolved, and the blue arch of heaven-hung with pearly stars of hope-shed its peaceful glows over the murmuring sea.

Again the night was passed in incessant labour of pumping and clearing up the dismantled hull; but when daylight appeared, the wind having veered and increased, the sea ran in short swells, rocking the unwieldly hull, and fearfully straining every timber in its frame.  The leak now increased rapidly, as also did the water in the hold, now beyond their exertions to clear.  At ten o’clock all hopes of keeping the wreck afloat had disappeared; and the last alternative of a watery grave, or launching upon the broad ocean, presented its stern terms for their acceptance.  A council decided to adopt the latter, when, as the hulk began to settle in the sea, and with no little danger of swamping, boats were launched, supplied with such stores as were at hand, the passengers and crew embarked, and the frail barks sent away with their hapless freight to seek a haven of safety.  The leviathan hulk soon disappeared from sight.  Franconia, with twenty-five fellow unfortunates, five of whom were females, had embarked in the mate’s boat, which now shaped her course for Nassau, the wind having veered into the north-west, and that seeming the nearest and most available point.  The clothing they stood in was all they saved; but with that readiness to protect the female, so characteristic and noble of the sailor, the mate and his men lightened the sufferings of the women by giving them a portion of their own:  incasing them with their jackets and fearnoughts, they would shield them from the night chill.  For five days were sufferings endured without a murmur that can only be appreciated by those who have passed through shipwreck, or, tossed upon the ocean in an open boat, been left to stare in the