The dark waves of the tempest had sped away to other regions. A gentle breeze from the land had arisen, full of sweet fragrance and a healing freshness, and, bright over head, in the blessed heavens, blossomed fresh the eternal host of the stars. Oh! the life and soothing in that smile of God. But we were not strong for the blessing, nor sufficiently grateful that life was still vouchsafed us. The day dawned upon us to increase our wretchedness. It left us without hope. Our food was ruined by the waves that filled the vessel, and though the land was spread before us in a lengthened stripe, bearing forests which were surely full of fragrance, we beheld not the means by which we should gain its pleasant shores with safety. Our boats had perished in the surf; one of them stove to pieces, and the other swept away. In our despondency and our sleep we had yielded our courage and our providence, and we lay now in the sight of heaven, amidst the equal realm of sea and sky, with the land spreading lovelily before us, yet could we do nothing for ourselves. We lay without food or drink all day, seeing nothing but the bare skies, the sea, and the shore, which only mocked our eyes. My sister sorrowed and sickened in my arms. She cried for water as one cries in the delirious agonies of fever. She would drink of the water of the deep, but this we denied her; and the day sunk again, and with it her hope and strength. With the increase of the winds that night, she grew delirious; and, when we knew not--and this was strange, for I cannot believe that I closed mine eyes that night--she disappeared. Once, it seemed that I heard her voice, in a wild scream, calling me by name, and I started forward to feel that she was gone. She left my arms while I lay insensible. It was not sleep. It was stupor. My consciousness was drowned in my great grief, and in the exhaustion of all my strength for lack of food.