he staff-heads, returned to the
ship realising _fully_, perhaps for the first time, the fact that we had
lost for ever a genial, brave, devoted, and sympathetic friend. "In the
midst of life we are in death." Never did I so thoroughly realise the
absolute literal truth of this as whilst sitting in the gig, silently
struggling with my feelings, on our return from poor Austin's funeral.
We had just laid him in his lonely grave on a foreign shore, far away
from all that he held dearest and best on earth, in a spot consecrated
only by the solemn service which had just been performed over it, a spot
which could never be watered by a mother's or a sister's tears, where
his last resting-place would be at the mercy of the stranger and the
savage, and where in the course of a very few years it would only too
probably be obliterated beyond all possibility of recognition. Yet
twenty-four short hours ago he was alive and well, rejoicing in the
strength of his lusty manhood, and with, apparently, the promise of many
years of life before him, never suspecting, as he went down over the
ship's side, with a cheery smile and a reassuring nod to me, that he was
going thus gaily to meet treachery and death. Poor Austin! I struggled
successfully with my feelings whilst the eyes of others were upon me,
but I am not ashamed to admit that I wept long and bitterly that night
when I reflected in privacy upon his untimely and cruel fate. Nor am I
ashamed to acknowledge that I then also prayed, more earnestly perhaps
than I had ever prayed before, that I might be taught so to number my
days that I might incline mine heart unto that truest of all wisdom, the
wisdom which teaches us how to live in such a way that death may never
find us unprepared.

On passing the _Virginia_ it was seen that her new fore-yard was slung
and rigged, the sail bent, and the other repairs completed, so that she
was once more ready for sea. Smellie shortly afterwards shifted his
traps over into her, returning to the _Daphne_ to dine with Captain
Vernon and to receive his final instructions.

These given, Mr Armitage and I were summoned to the cabin; and upon our
arrival there, the skipper, after speaking regretfully upon the loss
which the ship and all hands, himself especially, as he said, had
sustained through the first lieutenant's death, informed us that Mr
Smellie having received charge of the prize to deliver over to the
admiral of the station with an earnes