gh to secure an asylum for his
barque in an English harbour on an exposed portion of the coast. Vessel
after vessel had been coming ashore during the day; and the beach was
strewed with wrecks and dead bodies; but he had marked his townsman's
sloop in the offing from mid-day till near evening, exhausting every
nautical shift and expedient to keep aloof from the shore; and at
length, as the night was falling, the skill and perseverance exerted
seemed successful; for, clearing a formidable headland that had lain on
the lee for hours, and was mottled with broken ships and drowned men,
the sloop was seen stretching out in a long tack into the open sea.
"Miller's seamanship has saved him once more!" said Matheson, the
Cromarty skipper, as, quitting his place of outlook, he returned to his
cabin; but the night fell tempestuous and wild, and no vestige of the
hapless sloop was ever after seen. It was supposed that, heavy laden,
and labouring in a mountainous sea, she must have started a plank and
foundered. And thus perished,--to borrow from the simple eulogium of his
seafaring friends, whom I heard long after condoling with my
mother,--"one of the best sailors that ever sailed the Moray Firth."

The fatal tempest, as it had prevailed chiefly on the eastern coasts of
England and the south of Scotland, was represented in the north by but a
few bleak, sullen days, in which, with little wind, a heavy ground-swell
came rolling in coastwards from the cast, and sent up its surf high
against the precipices of the Northern Sutor. There were no forebodings
in the master's dwelling; for his Peterhead letter--a brief but hopeful
missive--had been just received; and my mother was sitting, on the
evening after, beside the household fire, plying the cheerful needle,
when the house door, which had been left unfastened, fell open, and I
was despatched from her side to shut it. What follows must be regarded
as simply the recollection, though a very vivid one, of a boy who had
completed his fifth year only a mouth before. Day had not wholly
disappeared, but it was fast posting on to night, and a grey haze spread
a neutral tint of dimness over every more distant object, but left the
nearer ones comparatively distinct, when I saw at the open door, within
less than a yard of my breast, as plainly as ever I saw anything, a
dissevered hand and arm stretched towards me. Hand and arm were
apparently those of a female: they bore a livid and sodden appea