There was one of my crew, a pale, delicate lad, whom I shall never forget. He was the only son of a widow, and had entered the navy, though against her will, to earn an honorable subsistence for her. Though he had been among us but a short time, he had already distinguished himself by his address and bravery, while his frank demeanor had made him a universal favorite. Since the loss of the Dart he had borne up against our privations with a heroism that had astonished me. When the rest were sad he was cheerful; and no suffering, however great, could wring from him a complaint. But on the twentieth day—after having tasted no food for forty-eight hours—the mortal tenement proved too weak for his nobler soul. He was already dreadfully emaciated, and for some days I had been surprised at his powers of endurance. But now he could hold out no longer, and was forced to confess that he was ill. I felt his pulse—he was in a high fever. Delirium soon seized him, and throughout all that day and night he was deprived of reason. His ravings would have melted the heart of a Nero. He seemed conscious of his approaching end, and dwelt constantly, in terms of the most heart-rending agony, on his widowed mother—so soon to be deprived of her only solace and support. Oh! the terrible eloquence of his words. Now he alluded in the most touching accents to his father’s death—now he recounted the struggles in his mother’s heart when he proposed going to sea—and now he dwelt on her grief when she should hear of his untimely end, or watch month after month, and year after year, in the vain hope of again pressing him to her bosom. There were stern men there listening to his plaintive lamentations, who had perhaps never shed a tear before, but the fountains of whose souls were now loosened, and who wept as only a man can weep. There were sufferers beside him, whose own anguish almost racked their hearts to pieces, yet who turned aside from it to sorrow over him. And as hour after hour passed away, and he waxed weaker and weaker, one feeble shipmate after another volunteered to hold his aching head, for all thought of the lone widow, far, far away, who was even now perhaps making some little present for the boy whom she should never see again.