68 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



was far more difficult thus in cold blood to face a dreadful death, with 

 no excitement or sympathy from without, than to fight a whole array 

 of cannon in a Balaklava charge. 



A young engineer-officer, some years back, was stationed in New 

 Zealand, in a very out-of-the-way district, far from the settled coun- 

 try. He was a gallant fellow, full of high aims and objects ; besides 

 which he rode well, shot well, could manage a boat, and swim admira- 

 bly, and had attained a twofold influence over the natives by his fear- 

 less courage and his noble nature. 



One stormy winter's afternoon, the sea running excessively high, 

 and a tremendous surf over the bar, a ship was seen laboring into the 

 roadstead of the small village near which he lived ; she was hoisting 

 signals of distress, and was believed to be an expected immigrant-ves- 

 sel, and therefore with women and children on board. 



The weather was so bad that there seemed no chance of her out- 

 living the gale, and not a sailor on the shore would lend a hand to 

 help, when Captain Symonds proposed to man a boat. Perhaps it 

 may be said that they knew the perils to be encountered better than a 

 landsman, however expert. Captain Symonds then called upon the 

 Maories to join him, and they immediately followed him into a risk of 

 life which the Englishmen refused to encounter, and for the sake of 

 sufferers not of their own race or country. 



The boat pushed off; the wind was on the shore, the surf running 

 in violently, and a cross-sea made it more dangerous ; the bay, too, 

 was known to be full of sharks. Still, however, the little boat held on 

 till within a few cables' lengths of the distressed vessel, which was 

 watching them anxiously, when the tremendous heave of a wave struck 

 her side and she was capsized. Captain Symonds was seen swimming 

 undauntedly toward the shore, holding on by an oar, but he was swal- 

 lowed up by the sharks before he had made any way. Two of the 

 gallant black fellows escaped. The vessel perished in the gale. 



It required a far higher kind of courage to face such a death, on 

 that dark stormy winter's evening, in the attempt to rescue unknown 

 passengers on board an unknown ship, than to storm the worst breach 

 ever surmounted in war, surrounded by one's comrades in the heat of 

 a battle raging in one's sight. The simple doing of God's work at the 

 moment when it was required, with no interior bargaining as to the 

 " worth while " of the sacrifice, in this obscure corner of the earth (as 

 it then was), by this young fellow, with his aspirations, his love of life, 

 his healthy longing after distinction, and the distinguished career open 

 to him, made his death as gallant an act as can be found even in the 

 long record of such deeds to be told of our English soldiers and sailors, 

 the largest portion of which are scarcely heard of at the time, and are 

 forgotten quickly afterward. 



The sharks are certainly not heroic themselves, but they are the 

 cause of a great deal of heroism in others. — Good Things. 



