To do his duty and face death on the battlefield the soldier requires great courage, even although _there_ he has only his fellow man—and the instruments created by him—to contend against. The seaman’s courage is, however, of a very different sort. In a storm he has to war with something infinitely more awe-inspiring than anything puny man can make! Hence, however sorrowful and heartrending the detail of suffering and death at sea, still we who read of such cannot but admire the indomitable pluck which characterises the conduct of mariners, even when they believe and feel that all hope has fled. Death is the portion of all; yet, although we are aware it is inevitable, there is a something—call it what we will—that instinctively impels us to fight and struggle for existence. During this struggle there are some well authenticated instances wherein men seem to have passed through the very gates of death, and yet, by the mysterious workings of Divine providence, have been for a time brought back, so to speak, into the land of the living until some purpose or aim had been accomplished. A clear case of the latter sort came within the experience of the present writer, and he hopes that the relation of the incident here will not be considered out of place by his readers:— We were coming from Quebec, Canada, bound to Milford, England, with a timber-laden ship called the _Marmion_. When about half way across the Atlantic the captain became very ill with something understood by us to be British cholera. He was confined to bed, but persisted, every day the sun was to be seen, in being carried up on deck to take observations at noon. We could all see he was dying, and though every attention was paid to him, we expected each day to be his last. Just three days before we sighted land our captain died apparently, and it being cold winter weather, we determined, if possible, to bring his body on for burial when we arrived in port. To our astonishment, some hours after we believed him dead, he suddenly revived, and asked for something to eat! He continued improving so much that one night about six o’clock, when we had just sighted Kinsale light, on the Irish coast, he, without any assistance, came up on deck, took the bearings of the light, and altered the ship’s course. A heavy gale was blowing, and the weather as thick as a hedge; still the ship, under close reefed topsails, was kept running all night before the wind, the captain, meanwhile, against all persuasion, insisting upon remaining on the poop. At noon next day, when the ship was still rushing along in the midst of a thick fog which prevented any land from being seen, the captain said quietly to the man at the wheel: “If the ship has been steered properly since we saw Kinsale light, she will be in Milford Haven in about three hours’ time; if she hasn’t been steered properly, she will be God knows where.” Almost immediately after speaking to the helmsman the skipper muttered in