NOTE INTRODUCTORY.

This little book is prepared under the conditions of saving the Mail which leaves England on the 12th, and of being a complete narrative of the Wreck. The one condition is adverse to the other; but I have endeavoured to meet them both.

F.

London, November the Eighth, 1859.

[!-- no visible number in original --]

“Forth from the polar caverns of the snows,

Dripping with winter, leapt a northern storm,

And shook himself, and she lay buried white....

Oh! and we were homeward bound!”

Balder.