A crumbling page before him lay, Which told the unspoken woe;-- “Our cabin fire went out to-day-- Food spent five days ago;-- “Locked in the ice three weeks,--our crew All dead,--all hope is o’er;-- Ship Rufus--1762-- One hour, and I’m no more!” Now horror on the souls sunk down-- On all who viewed the scene; Twelve arctic winters then had flown, Since this a corpse had been! Twelve years on polar surges tossed, By northern blasts conveyed-- Destroyed--preserved, by iron frost, Her crew were statues made. Perchance this fate-directed prow Had crossed ’neath cloudless skies The pole, which jealous Nature now Shuts out from human eyes. Perchance the dreamed of Northern Way This guileless keel had plowed, While billows with the helm did play, And wild winds trimmed the shroud. Say when, Stern Spirits of the North, They found their watery grave? Or do ye still in awful mirth, Toss them from wave to wave? CHAPTER X. LIFE-SAVING MEASURES. “‘O father, I hear the church-bells ring, O say, what may it be?’ ’Tis a fog-bell on a rock-bound coast,’ And he steered for the open sea. ‘O father, I hear the sound of guns, O say, what may it be?’ ‘Some ship in distress that can not live In such an angry sea.’ ‘O father, I see a gleaming light, O say, what may it be?’ But the father answered not a word, For a frozen corpse was he. * * * * * At daybreak, on the bleak sea beach, A fisherman stood aghast, To see the form of a maiden fair, Lashed close to a drifting mast. The salt sea was frozen on her breast, The salt tears in her eyes. And he saw her hair, like the brown seaweed, On the billows fall and rise.” One of the most destructive storms on record, and certainly the most terrible ever known on the whole English coast is the great storm of 1703. It is the only storm which has ever been made the subject of a Parliamentary memorial. It raged for a week over nearly the whole of England. Scores of vessels were driven on shore and perished. At Bristol, the in-driven sea filled the merchants’ cellars, destroying sugar, tobacco, and other produce, to the value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Eighty people were drowned in the river and adjacent [Illustration: STORM ON THE SHOALS, 1703.]