The sun having attained its zenith began to descend the westerly skies, and the afternoon was fair and warm, the wind now blowing but a summer breeze. Sometimes, when on the crest of the swell, I looked anxiously for a sail, but I saw nought save the bright horizon, against which the sharp outlines of the waves rose and fell in varying curves and ridges; so that now again I resigned myself to death, and covering my face with my hands, I, as it were, moaned, rather than sung inwardly to myself, many verses of psalms, which, when I was but a little child, I had repeated at my mother’s knee. Meantime, I began to feel a stiffening and a heavy drowsiness over all my limbs and upon my soul. When I opened my eyes the heaving waters turned into divers colours before my sight, so that I knew that my brain was wandering, and that my soul was departing. Howbeit, a holy tranquillity came down upon me. The blue sea appeared to melt away, and I saw—but dimly—the green bourock and the sweet soft swarded links of the Balwearie burn, with the brown herring nets drying on the windy grass. The place seemed holy and still; the sun was hot, and none were stirring, and presently I knew it was a summer’s sabbath day, for from out the open windows of the grey old kirk there came a low sound of psalmody, and I heard, as it were, in my brain, the voices of the congregation, as they sang— “In Judah’s land God is well known, His name in Israel’s great, In Salem is his tabernacle, In Zion is his seat.” After this, there came on me silence and darkness, I having gradually fallen into a fit or trance. I was roused by rude shocks and pulls, and a confused clamour of voices. Opening my eyes with effort, I saw surging upon the broken water, close to the spars, a ship’s boat with men, one of whom—he who rowed the boat oar—had grasped the collar of my sea doublet, and was hauling me into the pinnace, in which effort he succeeded, ere I could well make out whereabouts I was. At the same time several voices asked, in two different languages, what was my name and country, and how I came there. Now, of both of these tongues I had some smattering, the one being French and the other Low Dutch, of which I had heard and picked up somewhat in my several voyages up the river Scheldt to Antwerp. I therefore, trying to muster my senses, replied truthfully that my name was Leonard Lindsay—that I was a Scotsman, a mariner of the ship Golden Grove, of Leith, wherefrom I had fallen overboard, the spar to which I clung having been, as, indeed, they might perceive, blown away in tempestuous weather.