About five o’clock the skiff hailed us, and communicated the melancholy tidings that the lad John Chisholm was dead. This was the first breach made among us, and it fell among our wasting company like a forerunner of our own fate. We were all closely “round the grave’s devouring mouth,” and now that it had found its first victim, we felt assured that others would follow. George Peat, in our boat, was only in life, and several persons in both boats were visibly sinking fast into the same unconscious state. I felt this visitation bitterly, as I was in full hope of reaching land in a few hours, and was sustained—by the signal mercy hitherto enjoyed—in the pleasing expectation that “God would have given us the lives of all who sailed with us.” But “He who doeth according to his will” had deemed it otherwise, and our hearts smote us to think that we had been preserved amid many perils, possibly only to perish on the threshold of deliverance.
Visions of land floated before our aching and anxious gaze throughout that weary night, and often we supposed that we could detect the dim outline of the headlands between the sea and sky. Still we trembled in uncertainty until morning came; but when the sun arose, it looked down upon us from behind the African hills, which stood in distinct outline before us at the distance of twelve miles. Then every heart bounded with hope, and the fading energies of life revived within us. We greeted the glad spectacle with our morning incense, and poured out our thanksgiving to God our Ebenezer. There was a beautiful propriety in the subject of our song, which then rose on the morning air, from the margin of that mighty ocean. It was Psalm xlvi.,
“God is our refuge and our strength,
In straits a present aid;
Therefore although the earth remove,
We will not be afraid.
Though hills amidst the seas be cast,
Though waters roaring make
And troubled be; yea, though the hill
By swelling seas do shake.”