alas! too evidently--imbecile. As
this state of mental alienation showed itself more and more
distinctly, on his gradually acquiring physical strength, it seemed
as if the painful fact would kill me. But we are formed to endure
great extremes of bodily and mental anguish. The bow will bend far
before it breaks.

"After I had recovered so as to leave my berth entirely, and when, I
suppose, the captain thought it would be safe to question me, he
brought a map, and indicated plainly enough that he wished me to
point out the country I was from. I laid my hand upon the United
States. He looked surprised. I glanced around at the ship, and then
pointed to the map with a look of inquiry. He placed his finger near
the Island of St. Helena. It was now my turn to look surprised. By
signs I wished him to tell me how we should get back; and he
indicated, plainly enough, that he would put us on board of the
first vessel he met that was returning either to Europe or the
United States, or else would leave us at the Cape of Good Hope. But
day after day passed, and we met no returning vessel. Before we
reached the Cape, a most terrific storm came on, which continued
many days, in which the ship lost two of her masts, and was driven
far south. It seemed to me as if my father and I had been doomed to
perish in the ocean, and the sea would not, therefore, relinquish
its prey. It was ten or twelve days before the storm had
sufficiently abated to leave the vessel manageable in the hands of
the captain and crew, and then the captain's reckoning was gone. He
could get his latitude correctly, but not his longitude, except by a
remote approximation. His first observation, when the sky gave an
opportunity, showed us to be in latitude forty-five degrees south.
This he explained to me, and also the impracticability of now making
the Cape, pointing out upon the map the Swan River Settlement in
Australia as the point he should endeavor first to make. A heavy
ship, with but one mast, made but slow progress. On the third day
another storm overtook us, and we were driven before the gale at a
furious rate. That night our vessel stuck and went to pieces. Six of
us escaped, my father among the rest, and the captain, in a boat,
and were thrown upon the shore of an uninhabited island. In the
morning there lay floating in a little protected cove of the island
barrels of provisions, as pork, fish, bread, and flour, with chests,
and numerous fragments of the s