But what of Beatrice? Had she forgotten me? No—the dear creature had availed herself of one of the rare opportunities which then presented themselves occasionally of communicating with the north, to answer a long epistle I had transmitted to her, by a chance vessel, we met a few days after leaving Charleston. Oh! with what simple, yet nervous eloquence did she assure me of her unabated love, and how sweetly did she chide me for the doubts I had—sinner that I was—whispered respecting it. I kissed the dear missive again and again; I read it over and over a thousand times; I treasured it the more because I knew not when the chances of war would suffer me to hear from her again. I feared not now the influence of her uncle: I felt in my inmost soul that Beatrice was too pure, too self-devoted in her love ever to sacrifice it for lucre. And as I felt this it flashed across me that perhaps she might have heard of my being lost overboard from the merchantman; and who knew but that even now she might be mourning me as dead? Happily a brig was now in port about to sail for Charleston. I seized the opportunity, and wrote to inform Beatrice of my safety. In a few days our outfit was completed, and bidding adieu to my friends on board the Providence, we set sail from Newport. The day was bright and glorious, and the sunbeams danced merrily upon the waves. A light breeze murmured through the rigging; the gay song of the sailors from the merchantmen in port floated softly past; and the scream of the sea-birds broke shrilly over us, high in the clear blue sky. As the day advanced, however, a thin, gauze-like vapor gradually spread over the horizon, deepening before four bells in the afternoon watch to an impervious canopy of black, which stretching from pole to pole, obscured the whole firmament, and threw a premature and sickly gloom over the deep beneath. The wind, too, began to rise, blowing in irregular puffs, and whitening the surface of the sea in patches over the whole of its wide extent; while occasionally a low, half-smothered murmur, as if arising out of the very heart of the ocean, betokened that the elements of the storm were at work far down in their wild recesses. As the day advanced the sky became even more ominous, until long before night-fall its weird-like grandeur excelled any thing I had ever beheld. By this time, too, the wind had increased almost into a hurricane, and with every thing trimmed down, we were cleaving through the fast whitening billows with an exhilarating velocity that only a sailor can appreciate. The rain meanwhile was falling fast. As night came on the watch was set, and most of us went below, so that all off duty were soon congregated in our mess-room. “A wild night,” said the last comer, as he shook the wet from his shaggy jacket, “and I see you’re determined to make the most of it, my boys—push us the Jamaica, Parker, and don’t forget the junk in passing. Here’s to the thirteen united colonies, hurrah!”