A VOYAGE IN THE NORTH SUAS. 



elevation of their eyelids above their sunk and soddened eyes. One 

 man was at the pump ; he was kneeling on one knee, his bare bony 

 breast pressed for support against the pump-rail, and his features 

 writhen into a convulsed idiotic smile. Another poor wretch sate 

 apart, chewing a piece of canvas ; there was a terrific scowl 

 upon his face, and his eyes gleamed with that unearthly light which 

 insanity alone produces. He had become a maniac from hunger ! 



Arundel, directing the men who accompanied him, to assist the 

 others, instantly unloosed the lashings which confined the female's 

 wrists, and tearing open her dress, pressed his hand in an agony of 

 doubt and expectation to her heart. Its faint and irregular pulsa- 

 tions, showed that life still lingered in her frame. The old seaman 

 was gone for ever. A little wine and water was administered to the 

 sufferers, who were then with the greatest care lowered into the boat. 

 As the vessel was evidently settling fast, and it was of the first con- 

 sequence to give immediate relief to the survivors, no attention could 

 be paid to the funeral obsequies of the old man ; but one of the 

 sailors wrapping a piece of tarpaulin round the body, and securing 

 it by a few turns of a rope to a rail, left him to seek the depths of 

 the sea with the gallant little ship, which he had loved so well in life, 

 for a coffin. 



The crew of the other boat remained to secure the effects of the 

 rescued mariners. After some difficulty, they succeeded in obtaining 

 a few of the seamen's chests, as well as some trunks containing books 

 and various articles of female dress. It chanced, that one of the 

 trunks slipping out of the hands of the man who was removing it, 

 struck against and forced open a pannelled door, which in our hurry 

 we nearly missed. It opened into a small inner cabin, that, like the 

 outer, was nearly half full of water. It was fitted up with almost 

 oriental luxury ; costly mirrors were let into the sides, and in the 

 intervening spaces were painted landscapes, in the first style of art. 

 A few bales were rolling about in the water, which, on a seaman rip- 

 ping one of them up with his knife, were discovered to be filled with 

 the most costly French laces, at that time of immense value in Eng- 

 land. On the bed, the furniture of which, was in a corresponding 

 style of magnificence, was coiled up the attenuated body of an old 

 man, his knees and chin being in contact, and his arms wrapped 

 round some bulky object, in an embrace, the convulsive force of 

 which death had been unable to relax. The men turned over the 

 corpse, and having with some difficulty forced the stiffened limbs 

 asunder, discovered that the object of all this solicitude, which had 

 been stronger than famine and the fear of death, was a large bag filled 

 with gold coin. Overjoyed as the seamen were at their good fortune, 

 the hideous grin which sat upon the features of the corpse, whose 

 dead fishy eye, dimly discovered in the dubious light, seemed fixed 

 with malign meaning upon those who had at length reft from 

 him his dear-loved treasure, so horrified even the hardy seamen, 

 that it was not till they had removed the whole of the valuable 

 effects into their own boat, and had pulled a cable's length from the 

 the sinking sloop, that they began to congratulate each other on their 

 prize. 



