"There's a tide in the affairs of men, which,
Taken at the flood, leads on to fortune."
Shakspeare.
"There's a tide in the affairs of women, which,
Taken at the flood, leads—God knows where."
Byron.
"Neither do I! Last night, my friends, we left poor Tom in a desperate situation, from which it seems necessary that I should relieve him, but really without exactly knowing how—not feeling particularly well from the motion of the ship last night, it is not easy to think under such circumstances; still, believing as I do, in the sterling motto, Try, why, I will endeavor to gratify your curiosity, especially as I perceive we are honored with the presence of the ladies, and, for their sakes, if not for our own, I feel it incumbent to do something for him.
"Tom Clark had, by the waves, been already taken in, and by this time was nearly done for, so far as easy breathing was concerned. Slowly, but surely, his vision was fading away, and he felt that he was fast sinking into Night.
"'Deep the gulf that hides the dead—
Long and dark the road they tread.'
That road he felt that he was rapidly going; for his senses were becoming numb, and a nauseant sensation proved that if he was not sea-sick, he was remarkably sick of the sea, even to the point of dissolution.
"All dying persons hear musical sounds: all dying persons see strange, fitful gleams of marvellous light, and so did Thomas Clark—low, sweet music and soft and pearly light it was, but while he drank it in, and under its influence was being reconciled to Death, there suddenly rose high and shrill above the midnight tempest, a loud and agonizing shriek—the wild, despairing, woeful shriek of a woman—and it was more shrill and piercing than the ziraleet of Egyptian dame or Persian houri; and it broke upon the ear of the perishing man, like a summons back to life and hope. Well and instantly did he recognize its tones. 'It must be—yet no!—still it can be no other than her v-voice! It cannot be—and I am dy-ing!' and an angry wave dashed over him, drowning his utterance, and hurling his body, like a wisp of straw, high upon the ledge of rocks, whence the recoil, or undertow, was about to whirl it out again into the foaming waters, when it was prevented by a most wonderful piece of good fortune, which at that instant, intervened to save him, at what certainly was the most interesting and critical juncture of his entire earthly existence. Again that sharp voice rang out upon the storm, and a hand, small, soft, yet nerved with all a woman's desperate energy—desperate in Love! clutched him by the hair, and dragged—triumphantly dragged him to the hard and solid land, just over the ledge, on a winding path at the foot of the overhanging cliff. It was Betsey Clark's voice; it was Betsey Clark's hand; it was she who saved him; and thus he received a new lease of life at the hands of the very woman whom, in a former dream, he had sent so gaily sailing down the empty air—down through four hundred feet of unobstructed space—with boulders at the bottom—solid boulders of granite and quartz—gold-bearing quartz at that, and very rich, too, but still quite solid and considerably harder than was agreeable to either the woman, the buggy, or the horse, for not one of them was
'Soft as downy pillows are'—