150 THE ATLANTIC. [chap. in. 



the Cape, we had ample time to get an account of their advent- 

 ures, and to supplement from their experience such crude no- 

 tions of the nature of the place as we could gather during our 

 short stay. 



Frederick and Gustav Stoltenhofi are sons of a djer in Aix- 

 la-Chapelle. Frederick, the elder, was employed in a merchant's 

 office in Aix-la-Chapelle at the time of the outbreak of the 

 Franco-Prussian war. He was called on to serve in the Ger- 

 man army, where he attained the rank of second lieutenant, 

 and took part in the siege of Metz and Thionville. At the end 

 of the campaign he was discharged, and returned home, to find 

 his old situation filled up. 



In the mean time, his younger brother, Gustav, wlio was a 

 sailor, and had already made several trij^s, joined on the 1st of 

 August, 1870, at Greenock, as an ordinary seaman, the English 

 ship Beacon Light, bound for Rangoon. On the way out, the 

 cargo, which consisted of coal, caught fire when they were from 

 six to seven hundred miles north-west of Tristan d'Acunha, 

 and for three days all hands were doing their utmost to extin- 

 guish the fire. On the third day the hatches, which had been 

 battened down to exclude the air, blew up, the main hatch car- 

 rying oN'erboard the second mate, wlio had been standing on it 

 at the time of the explosion. The boats had been provisioned 

 beforehand, ready to leave the ship. Two of the crew were 

 drowned through one of the boats being swamped, and the sur- 

 vivors, to the number of sixteen, were stowed in the long-boat. 

 Up to this time the ship had been nearing Tristan with a fair 

 wind at the rate of six knots an hour, so that they had now only 

 about three hundred miles to go. They abandoned the ship on 

 Friday : on Sunday afternoon they sighted Tristan, and on the 

 following day a boat came off to their assistance and towed 

 them ashore. 



The shipwrecked crew remained for eighteen days at Tristan 

 d'Acunha, during which time they were treated with all kind- 



