Mr. Bruce," he added, as the mate rose to go, "have a look-out aloft, and let it be a hand you can depend on." His orders were obeyed. About three o'clock the look-out reported an iceberg nearly ahead, and, shortly after, what he thought was a vessel of some kind close to it. As they approached, the captain's glass disclosed the fact that it was a dismantled ship, apparently frozen to the ice, and with a good many human beings on it. Shortly after, they hove to, and sent out the boats to the relief of the sufferers. It proved to be a vessel from Quebec, bound to Liverpool, with passengers on board. She had got entangled in the ice, and finally frozen fast, and had passed several weeks in a most critical situation. She was stove, her decks swept,-in fact, a mere wreck; all her provisions and almost all her water gone. Her crew and passengers had lost all hopes of being saved, and their gratitude for the unexpected rescue was proportionately great. As one of the men who had been brought away in the third boat that had reached the wreck was ascending the ship's side, the mate, catching a glimpse of his face, started back in consternation. It was the very face he had seen, three or four hours before, looking up at him from the captain's desk. Not At first he tried to persuade himself it might be fancy; but the more he examined the man the more sure he became that he was right. only the face, but the person and the dress, exactly corresponded. As soon as the exhausted crew and famished passengers were cared for, and the bark on her course again, the mate called the captain aside. It seems that was not a ghost I saw to-day, sir: the man's alive." "What do you mean? Who's alive?" Why, sir, one of the passengers we have just saved is the same man I saw writing on your slate at noon. I would swear to it in a court of justice." "Upon my word, Mr. Bruce," replied the captain, "this gets more and more singular. Let us go and see this man." They found him in conversation with the captain of the rescued ship. They both came forward, and expressed, in the warmest terms, their gratitude for deliverance from a horrible fate-slow-coming death by exposure and starvation. The captain replied that he had but done what he was certain they would have done for him under the same circumstances, and asked them both to step down into the cabin. Then, turning to the passenger, he said, "I hope, sir, you will not think I am trifling with you; but I would be much obliged to you if you would write a few words on this slate." And he handed him the slate, with that side up on which the mysterious writing was not. "I will do anything you ask," replied the passenger; "but what shall I write?" "A few words are all I want. Suppose you write, 'Steer to the nor'west.' The passenger, evidently puzzled to make out the motive for such a request, complied, however, with a smile. The captain took up the slate and examined it closely; then, stepping aside so as to conceal the slate from the passenger, he turned it over, and gave it to him again with the other side up. "You say that is your handwriting?" said he. "I need not say so," rejoined the other, looking at it, "for you saw me write it." "And this?" said the captain, turning the slate over. The man looked first at one writing, then at the other, quite confounded. At last, "What is the meaning of this?" said he. "I only wrote one of these. Who wrote the other?" "That's more than I can tell you, sir. My mate here says you wrote it, sitting at this desk, at noon to-day." The captain of the wreck and the passenger looked at each other, exchanging glances of intelligence and surprise; and the former asked the latter, "Did you dream that you wrote on this slate?" "No, sir, not that I remember." "You speak of dreaming," said the captain of the bark. this gentleman about at noon to-day? "What was "Captain," rejoined une other, "the whole thing is most mysterious and extraordinary; and I had intended to speak to you about it as soon as we got a little quiet. This gentleman," pointing to the passenger, "being much exhausted, fell into a heavy sleep, or what seemed such, some time before noon. After an hour or more, he awoke, and said to me, 'Captain, we shall be relieved this very day.' When I asked him what reason he had for saying so, he replied that he had dreamed that he was on board a bark, and that she was coming to our rescue. He described her appearance and rig; and, to our utter astonishment, when your vessel hove in sight she corresponded exactly to his description of her. We had not put much faith in what he said; yet still we hoped there might be something in it, for drowning men, you know, will catch at straws. As it has turned out, I cannot doubt that it was all arranged, in some incomprehensible way, by an overruling Providence, so that we might be saved. To him be all thanks for his goodness to us." "There is not a doubt," rejoined the other captain, "that the writing on the slate, let it have come there as it may, saved all your lives. I was steering at the time considerably south of west, and I altered my course to nor west, and had a look-out aloft, to see what would come of it. But you say," he added, turning to the passenger, "that you did not dream of writing on a slate?" แ "No, sir. I have no recollection whatever of doing so. I got the impression that the bark I saw in my dream was coming to rescue us; but how that impression came I cannot tell. There is another very strange thing about it," he added. "Everything here on board seems. to me quite familiar; yet I am very sure I never was in your vessel before. It is all a puzzle to me. What did your mate see?" Thereupon Mr. Bruce related to them all the circumstances above detailed. The conclusion they finally arrived at was, that it was a special interposition of Providence to save them from what seemed a hopeless fate. The above narrative was communicated to me by Capt. J. S. Clarke, of the schooner Julia Hallock, who had it directly from Mr. Bruce himself. They sailed together for seventeen months, in the years 1836 and '37; so that Captain Clarke had the story from the mate about eight years after the occurrence. He has since lost sight of him, and does not know whether he is yet alive. All he has heard of him since they were shipmates is, that he continued to trade to New Brunswick, that he became the master of the brig Comet, and that she was lost. I asked Captain Clarke if he knew Bruce well, and what sort of a man he was. "As truthful and straightforward a man," he replied, "as ever I met in all my life. We were as intimate as brothers; and two men can't be together, shut up for seventeen months in the same ship, without getting to know whether they can trust one another's word or not. He always spoke of the circumstance in terms of reverence, as of an incident that seemed to bring him nearer to God and to another world. I'd stake my life upon it that he told me no lie." George Pope Morris. BORN in Philadelphia, Penn., 1802. DIED in New York, N. Y., 1864. |