REMARKABLE PRESERVATION FROM DEATH. 347 



at once a totally different creature. I awoke into a 

 low, heartless, quaking, quivering, fear - haunted, 

 cowardly, and weeping despondency, in which all 

 fortitude was utterly prostrated. The excitement 

 had worn out my very souL A corpse rising out 

 of a cold clammy grave could not have been more 

 woe -begone, spiritless, bloodless. Everything was 

 seen in its absolute dreadful reality. I was a casta- 

 way no hope of rescue. It was broad daylight, and 

 the storm had ceased ; but clouds lay round the hori- 

 zon, and no land was to be seen. What dreadful 

 clouds ! Some black as pitch, and charged with 

 thunder ; others like cliffs of fire, and here and 

 there all streamered over with blood. It was in- 

 deed a sullen, wrathful, and despairing sky. The 

 sun itself was a dull brazen orb, cold, dead, and 

 beamless. I beheld three ships afar off, but all their 

 heads were turned away from me. For whole hours 

 they woiild adhere motionless to the sea, while I 

 drifted away from them; and then a rushing wind 

 would spring up, and carry them one by one into the 

 darkness of the stormy distance. Many birds came 

 close to me, as if to flap me with their large spread- 

 ing wings, screamed round and round me, and then 

 flew away in their strength, and beauty, and 

 happiness. 



I now felt myself indeed dying. A calm came 

 over me. I prayed devoutly for forgiveness of my 

 sins, and for all my friends on earth. A ringing was 



