llent as a stomachic. Our bottle was
thus again to set forth on its travels. It was carried on board to
Peter Jensen, who happened to be in the same ship as was the young
mate; but he did not see the bottle, and, if he had seen it, he would
not have known it to have been the same from which were drunk the
toasts in honour of his betrothal, and to his safe return.

Although there was no longer wine in it, there was something quite as
good; and whenever Peter Jensen brought it forth, his comrades called
it "the apothecary." The nice medicine was so much in vogue that very
soon there was not a drop of it left. The bottle had a pleasant time
of it, upon the whole, while its contents were in such high favour. It
acquired the name of the great "Loerke"--"Peter Jensen's
Loerke."[4]

[Footnote 4: "Loerke," which generally means "lark," is the name
given among the lower classes in Denmark to a spirit bottle of a
peculiar shape. There is no word that corresponds with it in
English.--_Trans._]

But this time was passed, and it had lain long neglected in a corner.
It did not know whether it was on the voyage out or homewards; for it
had never been on shore anywhere. One day a great storm arose; the
black, heavy waves rolled mountains high, and heaved the ship up and
cast it down by turns; the mast came down with a crash; the sea stove
in a plank; the pumps were no longer of any avail. It was a pitch-dark
night. The ship sank; but at the last minute the young mate wrote on a
slip of paper, "_In the name of Jesus--we are lost!_" He wrote down
the name of his bride, his own name, and that of his ship; then he
thrust the note into an empty bottle that was within reach, pressed in
the cork tightly, and cast the bottle out into the raging sea. Little
did he know that it was the identical bottle which had contained the
wine in which had been drunk the toasts of joy and hope for him and
her, that was now tossing on the billows with these last
remembrances, and the message of death.

The ship sank--the crew sank--but the bottle skimmed the waves like a
sea-fowl. It had a heart then--the letter of love within it. And the
sun rose, and the sun set. This sight recalled to the bottle the scene
of its earliest life--the red glowing furnace, to which it had once
longed to return. It encountered calms and storms; but it was not
dashed to pieces against any rocks. It was not swallowed by any shark.
For more than a year and a day it drifted on-