is the high-road to ruin at all times."
"Yes, yes, I know that," groaned Joel. "But they put me in a coffin, and rowed me away. How do I come here? Oh, I am a doomed man! I am a doomed man! I shall not be long out of my real coffin!"
"Not if you go on like this, my brother," replied Mr. Edwards, impressively, and with a serious air. "You have received a severe contusion on the head, besides other injuries; and it is absolutely necessary that you be kept quiet, and discard these foolish fancies. Old Matthew Filkins is our only undertaker hereabouts; his workshop and wood-yard are close to the river side, and by water he frequently conveys his dismal but needful burdens. The wooden box in which he laid you for safety was required urgently for the body of a poor lad who died of infectious fever, and was laid in his mother's hovel midst living brothers and sisters. Mat is a kind-hearted man, and he did that for the poor widow which he would have scrupled to do for a rich one; though night or day on the river is all the same to him, for he could guide a boat blindfold: man and boy, for seventy years, Matthew Filkins has journeyed on that highway. He thought that he was doing best by you; he found, by a letter in your coat-pocket, that you came from 'The Swan,' Wood End, and, as he dropped down stream past our door, he deposited you, brother Joel, on the threshold where we found you, in a sad state indeed. I believe old Mat considered his dismal box tainted from having had one in your state in it, far more so than when it contained the remains of the poor boy for whom it was destined."
"And so it was, so it was, brother Edwards," exclaimed the penitent and humbled Joel; "and before I am put in a coffin again, I deserve to be buried alive if I am not a reformed man. When I get drunk again, may I be hurled into the pools of Ellendeen, along with the little misses of respected memory. But I say, brother, we must keep this mishap a secret from Patty, for she would be hard of belief as to it's being a reality, as you say it is; she would stick to the warning, and make sure I was a doomed man."
Very grateful and pleased was Patty, as time progressed and temptations multiplied, to find that her dear husband was proof against the strongest. Never was he known to be in the least degree inebriated after his return from the memorable expedition to Wood End; and not even to keep the "cold out," would he sip a drop of "fire-water" undiluted. The "warning" had not been in vain; and a long while after the events recorded had taken place, when Patty was made acquainted with them by her loving husband, who detested all concealments from the partner of his cares, she exclaimed in pitying tones, "It was very natural, my dear, that your thoughts should run on the terrible story about those precious babies, you that have little ones of your own. For my part, nothing in the wide world would tempt me to go a-fishing in those deep dark pools of Ellendeen; I should expect, every time I pulled up a heavy weight to see a dear baby instead of a fish!"
"But my dear," deprecatingly returned Joel, "even if the tale be true, it happened a century back, you know."
"Ah, Jo, Jo!" cried Patty, with a sly smile, "if I had a brandy-flask in my basket, perhaps I might forget that important fact."
A WATERSPOUT IN THE INDIAN OCEAN
One of the noblest and most beautiful sights in the world is a gallant, symmetrical, full-rigged ship, clothed with mighty wings from keel to truck, cleaving through the waves under the influence of a "right merrie" wind abeam. There is something exceedingly grand, to behold it steadily gliding along, like a thing instinct with life; to see its towering pyramidal sails swelling to the generous breeze; to glance from its fluttering ensigns, and bright sides, and snowy canvas, to the contrasting deep blue sea, sparkling beneath the vertical rays of the tropical sun; to hastily run over in one's mind a few only of the spirit-stirring associations conjured by the object. But it is not with a ship in this exhilarating position that I have now to deal; to the reverse – it is with one which lay like "a painted ship upon a painted ocean" – being a large East Indiaman, chartered to convey troops to the Bombay presidency, and lying totally becalmed not far from the tropics.
I was languidly swinging in my hammock, one sultry morning, when not a breath of air was stirring strong enough "to blow a lady's curl aside," when I heard a sound which convinced me that something unusual had occurred to arouse the listless idlers lounging on the upper deck. It speedily increased to such a degree that all between decks who were able (myself included) rushed up, pell-mell, to discover the reason, and soon there were none left below but the miserable sick, who could not crawl from their stifling berths.
"What's the kick-up?" roared the gigantic corporal of the grenadier company, the moment he got his head above the combing of the hatchway.
"Niver sighted sich a jamb sin' the meet at Ballyshannon!" echoed a voluble Irish comrade. "Maybe a tu-an'-thirty-punder wouldn't mak' buthermilk of us all just now."
"Can ye no kape that long red rope i' yer own impty hid, but ye must let every body know ye're a gomulah? Ain't it a watherspout, eh?" fiercely responded a brother Emeralder.
"A watherspout! an' what's that, avick? Summat to ate?"
"Ate! ye gossoon! Ay, it's summat as'll soon ate yer, big and ugly as yer are."
Some few happy-go-lucky reprobates laughed at Pat's sapience, but the majority felt the matter to be far too serious to permit their indulging in senseless merriment, and strove, with uncontrollable interest, to secure some position whence they could behold an object of which they had heard or read highly-colored accounts. I myself instantly sprang into the shrouds, and the whole spectacle then burst full upon me in all its novel grandeur.
As already mentioned, not a breath of air was stirring, and the vessel herself lay sluggishly on the briny ocean, the sails hanging in bags, or clewed up in festoons to the yards, and the masts motionless as Pompey's Pillar. At the distance of very little more than the ship's length, the sea was bubbling up in the shape of spiral cones of varying height and sizes, all of them springing from within a circle, the circumference of which might be equal to that of the ring of an equestrian circus. The vertical rays of the sun invested the falling spray with an indescribable beauty, but the level water appeared of a dull, strong, white color. The phenomenon was attended by a very loud and long-continued hissing noise, of a peculiar and terrifying kind. This was but the commencement of a waterspout. Every moment we expected to see the several columns unite in one; and, from their contiguity, there would, in such a case, be no hope of final escape. Either the ship would be totally engulfed, or every atom of mast, rigging, and all above deck, would be whirled a hundred fathoms through the air.
Travelers say that the serpent possesses the basilisk power of fascinating its prey by the glare of its eye, and certainly a waterspout is equal in that terrible attribute, for scarcely a man in the ship that saw it was able to withdraw his gaze from the fearful spectacle. All other faculties seemed to be absorbed, and even had they had the opportunity to flee, few would have been able to move a foot.
Many on board were personally cognizant that any extraordinary concussion of the air, as that produced by the firing of guns, had been known to cause waterspouts to subside, and the captain of our ship had given orders to train two of the main-deck large carronades (for we were armed en flute) upon it, with heavy charges. But so riveted and entranced were all, that it was with extreme difficulty that either soldiers or sailors could be got to move; and only when some of the officers literally placed their own shoulders to the wheel, and exhorted, and even struck the gaping, bewildered men, were the guns charged and trained in the waist of the ship. Scarcely was this done, when five or six of the largest columns suddenly joined together, as though by a species of magnetic attraction, and formed one of colossal magnitude, high as the maintopsail-yard, the spiral motion rapidly increasing, and the whole body seeming to near the ship.
"We shall soon know our fate," exclaimed the captain. "Now, Tom," said he, to the old man-o'-war's gunner, "do your best – your very best."
"Ay, ay, sir!" replied the tough old salt, in that
