startled me so that I had
nearly let go my hold? I roused myself--I looked around--I was tossing up
and down with a regular motion, but could see nothing clearly, I was no
longer carried forward so swiftly as before, but the dim light prevented
me making out the place I was now in.

Suddenly, a flash broke from the black clouds, and for a single moment
shed a blue light over everything. What a spectacle! All around, for
miles and miles and miles, was nothing but dancing water, like shining
hills with milky tops, but not a living creature beside myself to keep me
company, or say a kind word, or listen to me when I spoke, or pity me
when I moaned! Oh! who could tell what I then felt, what I feared, and
what I suffered! Alone! alone!

When I think, as I often do now, of that terrible scene, and figure to
myself my drenched body clinging to that piece of timber, I seem to feel
a strange pity for the miserable dog thus left, as it seemed, to die,
away from all his fellows, without a friendly howl raised, to show there
was a single being to regret his loss--and I cannot help at such times
murmuring to myself, as if it were some other animal, "Poor Job! poor
dog!"

I remember a dimness coming over my eyes after I had beheld that world of
water--I have a faint recollection of thinking of Fida--of poor Nip--of
the drowning puppies I had tried in vain, to save--of my passing through
the streets of Caneville with my meat-barrow, and wondering how I could
have been so foolish as to feel ashamed of doing so--and then--and
then--I remember nothing more.

PAINS AND PLEASURES.

When I again opened my eyes after the deep sleep which had fallen upon
me, morning was just breaking, and a grey light was in the sky and on the
clouds which dotted it all over.

As I looked round, you may well think, with hope and anxiety, still
nothing met my view but the great world of water, broken up into a
multitude of little hills. I now understood that I was on the sea, where
I had been borne by the rushing river; that sea of which I had often
read, but which I could form no idea about till this moment.

The sad thought struck me that I must stop there, tossed about by the
wind and beaten by the waves, until I should die of hunger, or that,
spent with fatigue, my limbs would refuse to sustain me longer, and I
should be devoured by some of the monsters of the deep, who are always on
the watch for prey.

Such reflections did not help to m