After a while, finding myself uneasy, and wanting to change my posture, about one in the afternoon I laid my hand on the gunnel to raise myself a little, and in the act of turning thought I saw land, but said nothing till I was perfectly satisfied of its reality, having frequently suffered the most grievous disappointments in mistaking fogbanks for land. When I cried out, "Land! land!" and we were all convinced that it was so, imagine how great were our emotions and exertions! From the lowest state of desponding weakness we were at once raised to ecstasy, and a degree of vigour that was astonishing to ourselves. We hoisted the sail immediately. The boatswain, who was the strongest man in the boat, crawled to the stern, and took the tiller. Two others found strength to row, from which we had desisted the four precediug days through weakness. At four o'clock another man died, and we managed to throw both the bodies overboard. 'The land, when I first discovered it, was about six leagues off. The wind was favourable, and with sail and oars we went three or four knots. About six o'clock we perceived some shallops in with the land. We steered for the nearest, and came up with her about halfpast seven, just as she was getting under sail to carry in her fish. We hallooed to them as loud as we could, and they lowered their sail to wait for us; but when we were close on board, to our great grief and astonishment, they hoisted their sail again, and were going to leave us. Our moans, however, were so piteous and expressive, that they soon brought to, and took us in tow. They mistook us for Indians, or rather, as they told us, did not know what to think of us, our whole aspect was so unaccountably dismal and horrible. They gave us biscuit and water; but the latter only was acceptable, having totally lost our appetite for solid food. About eight in the evening we got on shore in Old St. Lawrence Harbour, on the western side of Placentia Bay, in Newfoundland, and were most kindly treated. They made chowder (a mess made with the heads of codfish) for us, and gave us beer made of the tops of juniper, fermented with molasses. We lay all night before a large fire, expecting a good night's rest, but could get very little sleep on account of the violent pains all over us. Captain Killaway died about three o'clock in the morning, having been speechless thirty-six hours before. Our bodies were soon covered over with boils and sores, and it was eleven days before any of us could walk abroad. 'On the 20th of July we left St. Lawrence Harbour, and got to Placentia on the 24th, with our little boat astern, in which we went on board the Ludlow Castle, a man-of-war commanded life, Mr. Boys was accustomed annually to commemorate his escape by acts of private devotion, and an almost total abstinence from food during twelve successive days, beginning with the 25th of June; and he, besides, adopted as a motto to his armorial bearings the legend, From by Captain John St. Loo, who entered us immediately for victuals, and gave us leave to live on shore at the kind invitation of the governor, who paid for the board of the surgeon and me at the tavern, and sent the rest to the barracks, where they were taken good care of, and recovered fast. When I told Cap-fire, water, and famine preserved by Providence. tain St. Loo of the number of persons who came from the Luxborough in one boat, he knew not how to give credit to my story; and one calm morning he ordered as many men as could be safely stowed in her to be carried on shore, when they could crowd | no more than twenty into her with any prospect of working the boat. But, alas! we were forced to lie on one another at first, in the most uneasy situation, till death made room for us. On the 4th of September, five of us (one went to New England) sailed for Biddeford, and arrived safely there on the 1st of October, after escaping great danger from the crazy state of the vessel. At Barnstaple the mayor paid our horse - hire to Ilfracombe, from whence we went by water to Bristol, where the merchants on 'Change collected money for our fare to London in the stagecoach, at which place we arrived on the 14th of October. 'The boat in which we were saved was sixteen feet long, five feet three inches broad, and two feet three inches deep, pretty sharp for rowing well, and made to row with four oars.' For the whole of his after THE FROZEN SHIP. ONE serene evening in the middle of August 1775, Captain Warrens, the master of a Greenland whale ship, found himself becalmed among an immense number of icebergs, in about 77° of north latitude. On one side, and within a mile of his vessel, these were of immense height, and closely wedged together; and a succession of snow-covered peaks appeared behind each other as far as the eye could reach, showing that the ocean was completely blocked up in that quarter, and that it had probably been so for a long period of time. Captain Warrens did not feel altogether satisfied with his situation; but there being no wind, he could not move one way or the other, and he therefore kept a strict watch, knowing that he would be safe as long as the icebergs continued in their respective places. About midnight the wind rose to a gale, accompanied by thick showers of snow, while a succession of thundering, grinding, and crash ing noises gave fearful evidence that the ice was in motion. The vessel received violent shocks every moment; for the haziness of the atmosphere prevented those on board from discovering in what direction the open water lay, or if there actually was any at all on either side of thein. The night was spent in tacking as often as any case of danger happened to present itself; in the morning the storm abated, and Captain Warrens found to his great joy that his ship had not sustained any serious injury. He remarked with surprise that the accumulated icebergs, which had the preceding evening formed an impenetrable barrier, had been separated and disengaged by the wind, and that in one place a canal of open sea wound its course among them as far as the eye could discern. It was two miles beyond the entrance of this canal that a ship made its appearance about noon. The sun shone brightly at the time, and a gentle breeze blew from the north. At first, some intervening icebergs prevented Captain Warrens from distinctly seeing anything but her masts; he was struck with the strange manner in which her sails were disposed, and with the dismantled aspect of her yards and rigging. She continued to go before the wind for a few furlongs, and then, grounding upon the low icebergs, remained motionless. Captain Warren's curiosity was so much excited, that he immediately leaped into his boat with several seamen, and rowed towards her. On approaching, he observed that her hull was miserably weather-beaten, and not a soul appeared on the deck, which was covered with snow to a considerable depth. He hailed her crew several times, but no answer was returned. Previous to stepping on board, an open port-hole near the main chains caught his eye, and looking into it, he perceived a man reclining back in a chair, with writing materials on a table before him; but the feebleness of the light made everything very indistinct. The party went on deck, and having removed the hatchway, which they found closed, they descended to the cabin. They first came to the apartment which Captain Warrens viewed from the port-hole; a tremor seized him as he entered it. Its inmate retained his former position, but seemed to be insensible to strangers. He was found to be a corpse; and a green, damp mould had covered his cheeks and forehead, and veiled his eyeballs. He had a pen in his hand, and a log-book lay before him, the last sentence in whose unfinished pages ran thus:-'November 11th, 1762. We have now been enclosed in ice seventeen days. The fire went out yesterday, and our master has been trying ever since to kindle it again without success. His wife died this morning. There is no relief-' Captain Warren and his sea men hurried from the spot without uttering a word. On entering the principal cabin, the first object that attracted their attention was the dead body of a female, reclining on a bed in an attitude of deep interest and attention. Her countenance retained the freshness of life, and a contraction of the limbs alone showed that her form was inanimate. Seated on the floor was the corpse of an apparently young man, holding a steel in one hand and a flint in the other, as if in the act of striking fire upon some tinder which lay beside him. In the forepart of the vessel several sailors were found lying dead in their berths, and the body of a boy was crouched at the bottom of the gangway stairs. Neither provision nor fuel could be discovered anywhere; but Captain Warrens was prevented, by the superstitious prejudices of his seamen, from examining the vessel as minutely as he wished to have done. He therefore carried away the log-book already mentioned, and returning to his own ship, immediately steered to the southward, deeply impressed with the awful example which he had just witnessed, of the danger of navigating the polar seas in high northern latitudes. On returning to England, Captain Warrens made various inquiries respecting vessels that had disappeared in an unknown way; and by comparing these results with the information which was afforded by the written documents in his possession, he ascertained the name and history of the imprisoned ship and of her unfortunate master, and found that she had been frozen in thirteen years previous to the time of his discovering her imprisoned in the ice. CHAPTER X. CAPTAIN INGLEFIELD'S NARRATIVE OF THE LOSS OF H.M.S. 6 CENTAUR,' AND THE PERILOUS VOYAGE IN AN OPEN BOAT OF HIMSELF AND ELEVEN COMPANIONS. AFTER the decisive engagement | was the Centaur, of seventy-four in the West Indies, on the glorious 12th of April 1782, when the French fleet under Count de Grasse was defeated by Admiral Sir George Rodney, several of the captured ships, besides many others, were either lost or disabled on their homewardbound passage, with a large convoy. Among those lost guns, whose commander, Captain Inglefield, with the master and ten of the crew, experienced a most providential escape from the general fate. The captain's narrative affords the best explanation of the manner and means by which this signal deliverance was affected. "The Centaur,' says the cap |
