were obliged to plunge through snow and water reaching to their
middle.

As the wind blew from the direction in which they were proceeding, the
large flakes of snow were driven into their eyes, and prevented them
from seeing many yards in advance. This caused them to deviate from
their proper course, and to travel in a direction which, if continued,
would have carried them off the shoal and field of ice into the sea,
or at least have taken them so far from any place of shelter, as to
have left them to perish in the ice and snow during the night.

This dreadful calamity was, however, prevented, by one of the party
having in his possession a pocket compass. Fortunately, bearings had
been taken previous to their leaving the wreck. The course they were
pursuing was examined, and to their surprise it was discovered that
they had been deviating widely from the direct line which they ought
to have pursued. This, however, enabled the party to correct the
march, and after a toilsome journey of six miles, they at length
reached Newark.

In the course of their hazardous journey, a striking instance was
afforded of the inscrutable ways of Providence. Two females were on
board the Proserpine when she was stranded,--one a strong healthy
woman, accustomed to the hardships of a maritime life: the other
exactly the reverse, weak and delicate, had never been twelve hours on
board a ship until the evening previous to the frigate's sailing from
Yarmouth. Her husband had been lately impressed, and she had come on
board for the purpose of taking farewell. Owing to a sudden change of
the weather, and the urgency of the mission for which the Proserpine
had been despatched, she had been unable to quit the ship. The poor
creature was upon the eve of her confinement, and naturally being but
ill prepared to combat with the inconvenience of a ship at sea, in the
course of the day she was delivered of a dead child. The reader can
well imagine the sufferings endured by this helpless woman, with but
one of her own sex to tend her, in a vessel tossed about in the stormy
seas of the Northern Ocean.

But this was little compared with what she had yet to undergo. Before
many hours the frigate stranded: the night was passed in torture of
mind and body, and then was she compelled, with others, to quit the
ship, and travel through masses of snow and ice, and to combat with
the bitter north wind, hail, and sleet.

It may well be supposed that her streng