At length, after a series of vain efforts, I grew calm and resigned. I made up my mind to die. I took my handkerchief from my neck, and tied my pocket-book to the D's of the saddle. I pulled my rings off my fingers, and put them in my pocket--I had heard of wreckers cutting off the fingers of drowned men--and then was on the point of dashing forward at random, when some inner feeling made me cast another steady glance all round. At that moment, just behind me, something sparkled twice, and disappeared, and then reappearing, shone faintly, but so steadily, that there could be no doubt it was a light on the Cheshire shore. In an instant my horse's head was turned round. I had gathered him together, dug in the spurs, and crying from the bottom of my heart, "Thank God!" in the same moment, not profanely, but with a horseman's instinct, shouting encouragingly, and dashed away toward the light. It was a hard fight; the ground seemed melting from under us--now struggling through soft sand, now splashing over hard, now swimming (that was easy), and now and again leaping and half falling, but never losing hold of my horse or sight of the beacon; we forced through every obstacle, until at length the water grew shallower and shallower; we reached the sand, and, passing the sand, rattled over the shingle at high-water mark--and I was saved! But I did not, could not stop; up the loose shingles I pressed on to the light that had saved me. I could not rest one instant, even for thanksgiving, until I knew to what providential circumstance I owed my safety. I drew up at a fisherman's hut of the humblest kind, built on the highest part of the shore, full two miles from Parkgate; a light, which seemed faint when close to it, twinkled from a small latticed window. I threw myself from my horse, and knocked loudly at the door, and as I knocked, fumbled with one hand in my soaked pocket for my purse. Twice I knocked again, and the door, which was unhasped, flew open. A woman, weeping bitterly, rose at this rude summons; and at the same moment I saw on the table the small coffin of a young child, with a rushlight burning at either end. I owed my life to death! SKETCHES OF ORIENTAL LIFE. BY F.A. NEALE, ESQ. LIFE OF A TURKISH GENTLEMAN.