Husbands, fathers, sons, brothers, all!
Sunk ’neath thy heaving pall,
Beautiful, treacherous, cruel Sea!
In calms, thy smooth and placid breast
Might lull a babe to rest,
And ne’er disturb its peaceful sleep.
In storms, thine awful mountain waves—
Not cradles then, but graves—
Swallow brave men. Oh! hungry Deep.
To do his duty and face death on the battlefield the soldier requires great courage, even although there he has only his fellow man—and the instruments created by him—to contend against. The seaman’s courage is, however, of a very different sort. In a storm he has to war with something infinitely more awe-inspiring than anything puny man can make! Hence, however sorrowful and heartrending the detail of suffering and death at sea, still we who read of such cannot but admire the indomitable pluck which characterises the conduct of mariners, even when they believe and feel that all hope has fled. Death is the portion of all; yet, although we are aware it is inevitable, there is a something—call it what we will—that instinctively impels us to fight and struggle for existence. During this struggle there are some well authenticated instances wherein men seem to have passed through the very gates of death, and yet, by the mysterious workings of Divine providence, have been for a time brought back, so to speak, into the land of the living until some purpose or aim had been accomplished. A clear case of the latter sort came within the experience of the present writer, and he hopes that the relation of the incident here will not be considered out of place by his readers:—