on the waves with a manifest distrust of Provi dence, and an anxiety that betrayed a culpable want of resignation. The bateau passed the travellers on shore as she neared the rock. Frank waved his handkerchief triumphantly. The water just a-head roared and leaped up in white masses like a thousand monsters; and, at the first violent whirl, he was pulled down by a voyageur, and commanded imperatively to lie still. Another and another shock followed in quick succession, and she was perfectly unmanageable. The helmsman threw himself flat on the bottom. Mr. Van Pelt hid his face in his hands, and crouched beside him. The water dashed in, and the bateau, obeying every impulse, whirled and flung from side to side like a feather. It seemed as if every plunge must be the last. One moment she shivered and stood motionless, struck back by a violent blow, and the next, shot down into an abyss, with an arrowy velocity that seemed like instant destruction. Frank shook off the grasp of the voyageur, and, side, half rose to his feet. holding on to the "Gardez vous!" exclaimed the voyageur; and, mistaking the caution for the signal, with a sudden effort, he seized Mr. Van Pelt, and plunging him over the side, leaped in after him. "Diable!" muttered the helmsman, as the dandy, with a piercing shriek, sprang half out of the water and disappeared instantly. But the Split Rock was right beneath the bow, and like a shot arrow, the boat sprang through the gorge, and in a moment was gliding among the masses of foam in the smooth water. They put back immediately, and at a stroke or two against the current, up came the scientific "brutus" of Mr. Van Pelt, quite out of curl, and crested with the foam through which he had emerged to a thinner element. There was no mistaking its identity, and it was rudely seized by the voyageur, with a tolerable certainty that the ordinary sequel would follow. All reasoning upon anomalies, however, is uncertain; and, to the terror of the unlettered captor, down went un gentilhomme, leaving the envy of the world in his possession. He soon re-appeared, and, with his faith in the unity of Monsieur considerably shaken, the voyageur lifted him carefully into the bateau. My dear reader! were you ever sick? Did you have a sweet cousin, or a young aunt, or any pretty friend who was not your sister or your mother, for a nurse? And do you remember how like an angel's fingers her small white hand laid on your forehead, and how thrillingly her soft voice spoke low in your ear, and how inquiringly her fair face hung over your pillow? If you have not, and remember no such passages. it were worth half your sound constitution and half your uninteresting health, and long life, to have had that experience. Talk of moonlight in a bower, and poetry in a boudoir-there is no atmosphere for love, like a sick-chamber, and no poetry like the persuasion to your gruel, or the sympathy for your aching head, or your feverish forehead. * * * Three months after Frank Gresham was taken out of the St. Lawrence, he was seen sitting in a recess with Miss Clay, who, to the astonishment of the whole world, had accepted him as her lover! [THE LEGENDARY, AN AMERICAN PUBLICATION.] A VOICE FROM THE DEEP. "WHAT say you, boys, a caulk, or a yarn ?" says one of the "quarter gunners," addressing indiscriminately the watch one night, as soon as they were mustered. eight hours in," 66 Oh, let's have a yarn, as we've replied one of the top-men. "Bob Bowers will spin us a twist ;" and away to the galley a group of eight or ten instantly repaired. "Well, boys!" says Bowers, "let's see, what'll you have?—one of the Lee Virginney's, or the saucy Gee's?-Come, I'll give you a saucy Gee. |