"Yes, Nell," continued my father, taking advantage of my mother's pause; "long ere daylight we had left that dangerous anchorage, and had gone out to sea for safety and now, as I looked round me, mid the spray and the storm, not a token of land was to be seen. The gale I made what arrange

increased to a hurricane.

ments I could for the comfort and welfare of the

The

troops under my command, as it became necessary to batten down the hatchways. heavily laden transport shipped seas that threatened to swamp us. I then went to your mother; already had she been thrown more than once, with violence, from her berth. She was too weak to hold on. Lashing myself to a beam that went through our cabin, I clasped her close in my arms, and thus, at intervals, she gained some rest. Moss placed himself within hail, and now and then, during the weary four and twenty hours, brought us nourishment as he best could."

"And yet, my child," continued mamma

In

"nothing availed of all your father's care. the very height of the storm, at its very worst, you were born, Nellie, a little untimely blossom. The rough doctor belonging to the troops came at my need, and was as kind as his nature permitted. He rolled you, as well as he could, in cotton and wadding, and placed you in a drawer, shut all but an inch. Then taking stout sailcloth, he nailed strips of it round and over me; so that I was swathed up my berth, much as if it had been my coffin.

in

The storm, he de

clared, was too violent to permit him to do more for my comfort; I was secured from violent harm, and an hour or so more of this weather,' I heard him say, to your agonised father, "will make it a matter of no moment how they both fare.'"

"I lay for the next three hours, my child, calm, peaceful, and happy, while the uproar of the elements seemed more wild than than ever. There was something soothing to me, in the thought, that should it please God to make the

raging waters our grave, the struggle between life and death would be brief. We should all go together; one family, one household-the father, mother, and little stranger child, not yet kissed or blessed, not even seen-would at once, in one hour, yield up their lives together.

"Towards sun-down there was a lull, and I could hear the good doctor struggling his precarious way towards my cabin; as I lay, my head so close to the partition, I could hear him saying 'Life or death reigns below; we must see after the poor mother and give her some nourishment, sir, and we must remove the child; it is dead ere this.' Thus he spoke of my child; my little child whose voice I had never heard, whose face I had never seen. Perhaps it was this, which made me feel a species of weak joy that my little one had escaped any further rough usage from the stormy world into which it had been so abruptly ushered.

"Roland gave me the food prepared by the doctor; and I whispered to him, that I hoped

the poor little life had been recalled; that I so little felt I was a mother, I should have no regret. At this moment, the doctor, with some difficulty, opened the drawer in which you had been laid. High above the roar of the sea, the rattling of the chains, the hoarse cries of the sailors, rose your little voice, my child. I uttered a cry, I stretched out my arms, all the mother gushed into my heart, and I felt that my life was bound up in that little feeble one."

"Your voice was not musical, my darling," interrupted my father. "I shall never forget the amazement of old Blaize, as he looked at you, squalling loudly. Then, seizing the basin of gruel, from which I was feeding your mother, he dipped a bit of sponge into it, and held the dripping morsel to your mouth. You clutched it eagerly, and loudly screamed for more if it was withdrawn. 'By Jove!' exclaimed he, quite red with excitement and pleasure, this is the most plucky little wretch I ever saw. Save its life, I must, if I dry-nurse it

myself. There now, you greedy little thing, you have had enough for the present. If you are good, and don't die, you shall have some arrow-root next time.' Then, carefully covering you up again, he half-closed the drawer, saying 'I shall never forgive myself if that child dies.' Though the violence of the storm abated, yet were we driven for three weeks, tempesttost, on the ocean, during which your mother never was able to rise once, but remained lashed down to her berth."