He had now time to reflect upon his bereaved condition. All his fathers property had been put on board the vessel, and all had therefore gone to the bottom, save a few jewels which the wary merchant had caused him to secrete about his person for the sake of security, in case the crew should turn pilferers and practically illustrate the doctrine of appropriation. The old man had stowed his most valuable gems within the folds of his own turban, which went to the bottom with him; so that of all his immense wealth a trifling wreck only was preserved by the son, who was now a comparative beggar in a strange country, with the habits of which he was not familiar, and towards the inhabitants of which he felt no sympathy. His future prospects were none of the brightest. Although he had escaped death under its most fearful aspect, he possessed nothing in his own estimation to render life desirable. He had been cut off from all that was dear to him in the world, and there remained nothing to enhance the world to him. He thought upon his parent’s lamentable end, and wept. The dreadful fate of the Parsee girl rushed like the simoon blast across his heart and wrung it with intense agony. He wondered why he had not courted death amid the howling storm, and could scarcely account for his having used such endeavours to preserve a worthless and miserable existence: but he felt that he was called upon to struggle through the difficulties by which he was beset; and the pride of resistance at length rousing his spirit, he resolved to rise superior to his destiny, and exert all his energies to lift himself from the depression into which a course of concurrent but hostile circumstances had plunged him.