d to its native soil. All this
occupied much time. It was nearly dusk when we got her afloat, and the
wind had got up strongly from off the land. It came on to rain, and we
had not got far from the shore before the tide swept us clean out into
the Atlantic. We were shortly in a situation sufficiently perilous for
the heroic. There we were, three lads, whose united years would not
have made up those of a middle-aged man, in a very little boat, in a
very high sea, with a strong gale that would have been very favourable
for us, if we had wished to steer for New York. As we could not make
head at all against the combined strength of an adverse wind, tide, and
sea, we left off pulling, and threw all the sand out of the boat. We
knew the tide would turn, we hoped that the sea might go down, and
trusted that the wind would change. Before it was quite dark we had
lost sight of the land, and I began to feel a little uncomfortable, as
my boat's crew from stem to stern (no great distance) assured me that we
should certainly be swamped. In this miserable position of our affairs,
and when we should have found ourselves very cold, if we had not been so
hungry, and very hungry if we had not been so cold, an Hibernian
mercantile vessel passed us, laden with timber and fruit, viz. potatoes
and birch-brooms, and they very kindly and opportunely threw us a
tow-rope. This drogher, that was a large, half-decked, cutter-rigged
vessel, made great way through the water, and, as we were dragged after
her, we were nearly drowned by the sea splashing over us, and, had it
not been for our sand-bucket, it is probable that we should have filled.
In the state of the sea, to get on board the drogher from the dinghy,
was an operation too dangerous to be attempted.

But before this assistance came, what were my feelings? No situation
could be more disconsolate, and, apparently, more hopeless. Does not
the reader suppose that there was a continual fishing through my bosom
of agonised feelings? Can he not understand that visions of my
lately-forsaken green play-ground came over the black and massive waves,
and seemed to settle on them as in mockery? But were I to dilate upon
these horrors, would he not weary of them? Had I been the son of a king
thus situated, or even the acknowledged offspring of a duke, there might
have been sympathy. But the newly-emancipated schoolboy, drowned with
two lads just drafted from the Marine Society, in a sma