f utter exhaustion, staggered, rather than walked in, and flung
himself into a chair. "Jack," exclaimed the old woman, seizing him
convulsively by both his hands, "where's my cousin?--where's Hugh?" "The
master's safe and well," said Jack; "but the poor _Friendship_ lies in
_spales_ on the bar of Findhorn." "God be praised!" ejaculated the
widow. "Let the gear go!"

I have often heard Jack's story related in Jack's own words, at a period
of life when repetition never tires; but I am not sure that I can do it
the necessary justice now. "We left Peterhead," he said, "with about
half a cargo of coal,--for we had lightened ship a day or two
before,--and the gale freshened as the night came on. We made all tight,
however; and though the snow-drift was so blinding in the thick of the
shower that I could scarce see my hand before me, and though it soon
began to blow great guns, we had given the land a good offing, and the
hurricane blew the right way. Just as we were loosening from the quay, a
poor young woman, much knocked up, with a child in her arms, had come to
the vessel's side, and begged hard of master to take her aboard. She was
a soldier's wife, and was travelling to join her husband at Fort-George;
but she was already worn out and penniless, she said; and now, as a
snow-storm threatened to block up the roads, she could neither stay
where she was, nor pursue her journey. Her infant, too,--she was sure,
if she tried to force her way through the hills, it would perish in the
snow. The master, though unwilling to cumber us with a passenger in such
weather, was induced, out of pity for the poor destitute creature, to
take her aboard. And she was now with her child, all alone, below in the
cabin I was stationed a-head on the out-look beside the foresail
_horse_: the night had grown pitch dark; and the lamp in the binnacle
threw just light enough through the grey of the shower to show me the
master at the helm. He looked more anxious, I thought, than I had almost
ever seen him before, though I have been with him, mistress, in bad
weather; and all at once I saw he had got company, and strange company
too, for such a night: there was a woman moving round him, with a child
in her arms. I could see her as distinctly as ever I saw anything,--now
on the one side, now on the other,--at one time full in the light, at
another half lost in the darkness. That, I said to myself, must be the
soldier's wife and her child; but how in the n