When I recovered my senses, I was lying on the quarter deck, while the cool night breeze swept deliciously over my fevered brow, and my ears were soothed with the gentle ripple of the waters as the ship moved on her course. A solitary star, struggling through a rent in the clouds overhead, shone calmly down on me. I turned uneasily around. “How are you, Parker?” said the voice of the lieutenant, approaching me. “We are nearing the schooner rapidly, when you’ll have your wound attended to—I bandaged it as well as I could.” “Thank you,” I said, faintly. “But have you really brought off the prize?” “Ay, ay,” said he, laughing, “we got off, although they hailed cannon balls around us like sugar-plums at a carnival in Rome. Never before did I run such a gauntlet. But the sleepy fellows did not get properly awake until we had made sail—had they opened their fire at once, they might have sent us to Davy Jones’ locker in a trice.” “And the enemy’s crew?” “All snug below hatches, every mother’s son of them. They fought like devils, and came within an ace of beating us. But, faith, yonder is the old schooner. Ship, ahoy!” We were soon aboard. My wound proved a serious, though not a dangerous one, and for several weeks I was confined to my hammock. * * * * * A DAY AT NIAGARA. BY MRS. E. C. STEDMAN. “Well, here’s an evil of rail-road travelling that I never thought of before!” screamed a bright girl, with pouting, rosy lips and a dimpled chin, at the risque of spoiling as sweet a voice as ever warbled “Away with Melancholy,” on a May morning; addressing her words to our good cousin, who had taken upon himself the responsible charge of escorting a party of ladies, (among whom were the fair speaker, his sister, and my fortunate self,) to see the great ‘lion’ of this western world. “You say that we are within five miles of Niagara, yet I cannot hear its voice for the eternal gabble, gabble of this locomotive. Why, all my dreams have been associated with the geographic recollections of childhood, which invariably said, ‘The roar of the cataract may be heard distinctly at the distance of fifteen or twenty miles.’” “You forget,” replied her brother, “that it is when those wise assurances were written, which make the eyes of the school-girl stand out ‘as visibly as letters on a sign,’ that this rapid, noisy mode of travelling was unthought of: wait a little, my sweet sis., till we reach the point of our destination, and Niagara’s thundering bass will sound all the mightier, for bursting suddenly upon your ear.”