It was in vain. Her crew clinging to the rigging, were all engaged each in his own preservation, and no more noticed the half-buried figure calling to them, than they observed the sea-bird that, like an _avant courier_, swept the billow before them. I shouted, I shrieked, I waved my arm frantically over my head. But all to no purpose. I heard the fierce bubbling of the waters as the mighty ship tore through them close at hand; I caught a glimpse of the pale and terrified faces of her crew, gleaming out in the angry light of the setting sun: and then the vision passed, a Titanic wave upheaved between us, and I was alone. Alone on the illimitable ocean! Alone while night was drawing on! Alone with no chance of escape remaining! Far, far to leeward, just visible occasionally over the distant surges, I saw my own vessel; but, except this, the horizon was now without a speck. I burst into tears. The tension of my nerves had been unnatural; they now gave way: and, as I saw nothing but death before me, I wept like a child. Yet still it was the thought of my mother that affected me, not any consideration of self. My whole past life rushed in review before me. I saw myself at my mother's knee looking and wondering as she taught me to pray. I was a boy going to school, now chasing a butterfly, now watching the angler from the village bridge, but ever loitering on my way. I saw my little sister die, and after her, one by one, in that season of terrible epidemic, my four brothers. I followed my father to the grave, the last victim of that pestilence: I wept with my surviving parent: I promised always to stay by her: I was her all in all. And then, with the flight of years, came other pictures. I was older and more adventurous, but, I fear, not wiser nor better. A strange longing for the sea had seized me. I had secretly joined a ship sailing to the Mediterranean, and was now on my return. But, alas! I was never to see that happy home again. The avenging bolt of God had overtaken me. No mother would ever weep above my ashes, no kind hand would deck the sod with flowers. My doom was to be tossed to and fro, midway down the depths of ocean, until the trumpet of the arch-angel should sound.