w.
It is a loving and tender thing in our Creator to decree to us this
curtain of unconsciousness when nerve and strength would otherwise give
way beneath the intensity of suffering--a holy and gentle thing for
which we are not half thankful enough in our estimate of blessings.

My sleep, or swoon, shielded me from long hours of agony, mental and
physical, that must have become unendurable ere the close. As it was, I
knew no more after the sea-shaft closed with its wondrous and mysterious
revelations (which I yet recall with marveling and admiration, as we are
wont to do a pageant of the past), until aroused from lethargy by the
hand and voice of Christian Garth.

It was night. I saw the glimmer of the moonlight on the seas, a
tranquil, balmy night; but some dark object was interposed between me
and the stars which, I knew, were shining above, and the raft lay
motionless upon the waters. I was aware, when my senses returned
temporarily, that the bow of a mighty vessel was projected above our
frail place of refuge, and that we were saved. The dove had come at
last!

When or how we were lifted to the deck of the ship I knew not, for,
having partially revived, I soon drifted away again into profound
lethargy and entire unconsciousness, which for a time seemed death.

CHAPTER V.

A woman sat sewing near my berth in the state-room in which I found
myself; a fan, lying on a small table at her side, betokened in what
manner she had divided her attentions--between her needle and her
helpless charge. I thought; indeed, that I had felt its soft plumes
glide gently across my face in the very moment of my awakening in the
first amazement of which I but dimly comprehended the circumstances that
surrounded me.

"What brought this stranger to my pillow! Who and what was she? Where
was I!" These were my mental queries at the first. Then, as the truth
gradually dawned over my sluggish and bewildered brain, I lay quietly
revolving matters, and noticed my self-constituted nurse, and my
surroundings, with the close yet careless observation of a child.

The woman, on whom my gaze was earliest fixed (while her own seemed
riveted on the work upon her knee), was of middle age or beyond it, of
medium size, of square and sturdy make, and homely to the very verge of
ugliness. She was dressed plainly if not commonly in black, but there
was a general air of decency about her that seemed to place her beyond
the sphere of servitude.