my mind.
For my own life I cared not, but I thought of my wife--of her agony and
despair when she discovered that I was lost. I would have given worlds
to have got once more on board that little sea-tossed bark. I was
always a good swimmer. Even amid those tossing waves I found that I
could keep my head above water. Still the unequal struggle could not
have lasted long, when at the moment I was losing the dim outline of the
little vessel in the darkness, I found myself thrown against some
floating object. A hope that I might possibly preserve my life sprung
up in my bosom. I grasped the object, and found that it was part of the
mast and top of a large vessel. I clambered upon it and held fast while
I recovered my breath. Though it was violently tossed about by the
seas, which threatened every moment to sweep me off from it, still I
held on. My first thought was to endeavour to discover how far off was
the smack, on board which was all I prized in life. I could nowhere see
her. I have heard of people's hair turning white in a single night from
grief--I felt that mine might have done so from the agony of mind I
endured. Would the smack weather out the gale? or would my dear wife
survive the shock when she discovered that I had been so suddenly torn
from her? "I have often been punished, and justly, but this is the most
severe punishment of all," I thought to myself. A voice whispered in my
ear, "Curse God, and die,"--the same voice which had whispered the same
words into the ear of the Patriarch Job many ages ago, and has been
whispering the like into the ears of thousands of human beings ever
since. "Oh God, have mercy on me and support me!" I ejaculated, and
the tempter fled from me.

Scarcely able to breathe from the dense masses of spray surrounding me,
and from the waves which kept continually washing over me, I still clung
on to the wreck. I fancied that the shattered mast was being floated
onward. I do not remember now what reason I had for supposing so. It
contributed, at all events, to keep up my hope of being ultimately
rescued. How slowly and painfully the hours passed by! Often I thought
that, from very exhaustion and cold, I must be swept from my hold. At
length, as I was looking upwards at the sky to try and discover any
break in the clouds which might afford me an indication that the gale
was abating, I beheld the first faint streaks of dawn appearing in the
eastward. The clouds seeme