s healed. I rapidly recovered my
strength, and then the depressing feeling of my poverty, of my utter
inability to support a wife as I desired that Madeline should be
maintained, came over me. She ascertained the cause of my despondency.

"But papa can obtain employment for you," she remarked. "Why not, when
there is peace, leave the British Navy and enter that of the United
States? Surely it is equally honourable!"

Little did she know, when she said that, how, with all its faults, I
loved the glorious Navy of England: I perhaps scarcely knew myself, till
the sensations which the suggestion conjured up in my bosom told me.
Even the idea of quitting the sea and following some occupation on shore
had not the attraction for me which might have been supposed. Still I
had resolved to adopt the latter alternative if her father would bestow
her hand on me. He had been absent for some time, attending to public
affairs. At length he returned. I explained to him my position. I
thought he looked grave and sad as I went on speaking.

"I have been under a mistake," he observed. "I thought that you were in
the expectation of receiving a good property, and that you would have
the means of supporting my dear child. This war has ruined my estate,
and I am but little able to leave her anything. It will be better for
you both to part; I grieve that you should have again met."

These words pierced me to the heart, and overthrew all the bright
visions I had conjured up. They were so unlike, too, what I expected to
hear from him. I pressed my hands on my face and groaned. I dared not
meet Madeline. I thought that, too probably, he would prohibit me from
seeing her again. I sat the picture of despair. Just then a negro
servant entered the room, and gave a packet of letters to the colonel.
He handed me one with a black seal. Another blow. Some other member of
my family dead. It is too bitter. I cannot stand this. I'll go to sea
again, and hope that in mercy I may lose that life which has become too
burdensome to bear. Such thoughts, (wrong and impious I know they
were), passed through my mind as I kept the letter in my hand before
breaking the seal. I looked at the superscription. It was from my dear
sister Jane. I tore it open. The contents soon riveted my attention.
It was not long. One passage ran thus:--

"Some weeks ago, our old relation, Sir Hurricane Tempest, much to our
surprise, sent to ask one of us