dden puff
of wind carried it overboard.

Mrs. Lyndsay was sitting upon the deck with Josey in her arms, when she
heard a plunge into the water, followed by a loud shriek, and Mrs.
Muckleroy fell to the deck in a swoon.

The cry of "A man overboard!--a man overboard!" now rang through the
ship. Every one present sprang to their feet, and rushed to the side
of the vessel, looking about in all directions, to see the missing
individual rise to the surface of the water, and Flora among the rest.

Presently a black head emerged from the waves, and two hands were held
up in a deplorable bewildered manner, and the great blank face looked
towards the skies with a glance of astonishment, as if the owner could
not yet comprehend his danger, and scarcely realized his awful
situation. He looked just like a seal, or some uncouth monster of the
deep, who having ventured to the surface, was confounded by looking the
sun in the face, and was too much frightened to retreat.

Lyndsay, the moment he heard the man plunge into the sea, had seized a
coil of rope which lay upon the deck, and running forward, hurled it
with a strong arm in the direction in which Muckleroy had disappeared.
Just at the critical moment when the apparition of the shoemaker rose
above the waves, it fell within the length of his grasp. The poor
fellow, now fully awake to the horrors of his fate, seized it with
convulsive energy, and was drawn to the side of the vessel, where two
sailors were already hanging in the chains, with another rope fixed with
a running noose at one end, which they succeeded in throwing over his
body and drawing him safely to the deck.

And then, the joy of the poor wife, who had just recovered from her
swoon, at receiving her dead to life, was quite affecting, while he,
regardless of her caresses, only shook his wet garments, exclaiming--"My
jacket! my jacket, Nell, I have lost my jacket. What can a man do,
wantin' a jacket?"

This speech was received with a general roar of laughter: the poor woman
and her spouse being the only parties from whom it did not win a smile.

"Confound the idiot!" cried old Boreas; "he thinks more of his old
jacket, that was not worth picking off a dunghill, than of his wife and
his own safety. Why man," turning to the shoemaker, who was dripping
like a water-dog, "what tempted you to jump into the sea when you could
not swim a stroke?"

"My jacket," continued the son of Crispin, staring wildly at his
sat