tle damsel, "if you are not more
reasonable, and if you keep talking of throwing your life away, I will
never again place my hand in yours as now; I shall not love you any
more, and shall find means of letting Susan's mother know that you
went away and killed yourself, and made her a widow."

Men can only speak coldly and appeal to reason--logic is their panacea
in argument. Women alone possess those inspirations, those simple
words without emphasis, that find their way directly to the heart, and
for which purpose God has doubtless endowed them with those soft, mild
tones, whose melodies cause our most cherished resolutions to vanish
in the air; like those massive stone gates we have seen in some of the
old castles in Germany, that resist the most powerful effort to push
them open, but which a spring of the simplest construction causes to
move gently on their formidable hinges.

Willis was silent; but no openly-expressed submission could have been
more eloquent than this mute acquiescence.

In the meantime the tempest raged with increased fury, the winds
howled, and the water splashed; it appeared at each shock as if the
elements had reached the utmost limit of the terrific; that the sea,
as the poet says, had lashed itself into exhaustion! But, anon, there
came another outburst more terrible still, to declare that, in his
anger as in his blessings, the All-Powerful has no other limit than
the infinite.

"If it is not in the power of human beings to aid the crew of the
_Nelson_," said Mrs. Becker kneeling, "there are other means more
efficacious which we are guilty in not having sought before."

Every one followed this example, and it was a touching scene to behold
the rough sailor yield submissively to the gentle violence of the
child's hand, and bend his bronzed and swarthy visage humbly beside
her cherub head.

CHAPTER II.

TO WHAT EXTENT WILLIS THE PILOT HAD IDEAS ON CERTAIN SUBJECTS--THE
KNIGHTS OF THE OCEAN.

The storm continued to rage without intermission for three entire
days. During this interval, not only was it impossible to send the
canoe or pinnace to sea, but even to venture a step beyond the
threshold, so completely had the tempest broken up the burning soil,
the thirst of which the great Disposer of all things had proportioned
to the deluges that were destined to assuage it.

All had at length yielded to bodily fatigue and mental anxiety, for
the seeming eternity of these three days