The enthusiastic love which still warmed the faithful husband's breast, and a third signal of distress from the struggling vessel, mastered his better judgment, and, seizing his canoe, he dashed into the foaming waves and boldly stemmed their fury to the object of his mission. The overjoyed crew, as they heard his voice hailing them through the storm, cast out a rope, by which they hoisted him into their cracking ship. The most rapturous acknowledgments from the captain, greeted him as soon as he jumped on the deck; and the eager seamen called him their deliverer. He was happy! he said, he was happy in the achievement of what he had done; he had obeyed the wish of his beloved Berea, and he had survived the lashing surge. He was happy, in the confidence that he should rescue the gallant vessel he came to take under his control. But that hour of happiness was his last. He took the helm in his hands; he gave the requisite directions to the seamen, for the management of the ship; and he soon steered her out of the dangers of the bay, till she rode in safety on the main ocean. He then asked for a boat to carry him on shore, for his canoe had been crushed by an accident. But the wind still blowing hurricanes, they would not venture the loss of one of their boats: and during the hot contentions between him, and the ungrateful chief of the vessel he had preserved, they were driven out far to sea; whence his swimming arm, had he plunged into the boisterous deep, could have been of no use to him. Indignation, despair, overwhelmed him. None appeared to understand the nature of his feelings; all pretending to wonder that a European born, should not be grateful to any occasion that would carry him away from a savage country like that. In vain Laonce remonstrated; in vain he talked of his wife and children; the captain and his sailors laughed, promised him better of both sorts among his kindred whites; and when he cursed their hardened hearts and cruel treachery, they laughed again, and left him to his misery. At last, when the protracted hurricane subsided, and the vessel's log-book proved that she had been driven several degrees leeward of the Society Isles, abandoned to a sullen despair, he ceased to accuse or to reproach; he ceased even to speak on any subject, but cast himself into his lonely berth during the day, that he might not be irritated to continued unavailing madness, by the sight of the ingrates who had betrayed him. To his straining eyes, nothing but the silvery line of the starlit sea was on that distant horizon; but his heart's vision pierced farther, and he beheld the sleepers in that home;—no, not the sleepers! His disconsolate, his despairing wife, tearing her bright locks, and beating the tender bosom he must no longer clasp to his own. His children—"Oh! my babes!" cried he, and the cry of a father's heart for once pierced the obdurate bosom of the captain, who, in that moment, had happened to come upon the deck to examine the night. To ease his Otaheitan benefactor, he declared he had thus carried him off, to share in the honour of his expected discoveries. The unhappy chief, in then answering him, begged, that if he had, indeed, any spark of honesty towards him, he would prove it, by obeying his wish in one thing at least; and that was, to set him on shore on the first European settlement they should fall in with. "Do this," said he, "and I may yet believe you have honour. For honour is a man's own act; a discovery is fortune's; and for its advantages, did I stay, I should not have to thank you. But I want none such. Set me on shore, and there I will follow my own destiny."
To this poor request, the iron-souled commander of the vessel, at last consented; and in the course of some weeks after, Laonce was landed on the coast of Kamschatka. His secret intent was to lie in wait for the possibility of some ship touching at the port where he was set ashore, that might be bound to the track of his beloved islands; but not uttering a word of this, to the reprobate wretch who had torn him thence, he simply bade him "farewell! and to use his next pilot better;" so saying, they parted for ever. But weeks and months passed away, and no vessel bound for the South Seas, showed itself in that distant latitude; and its gloomy fogs, and chilling atmosphere, its pale sky, where the sun never shone for more than three or four hours in the day, seemed to wither up his life with his waning hopes! In no way did it resemble the land he had left; the warm, and the genial heavens of the home he was yet bent to find again;—and he left Kamschatka for some more propitious port; but, like Sinbad the Sailor, he wandered in vain. A cruel spell seemed set on him, or on the spirit of adventure; for in no place could he hear of a vessel going the way of his prayers. At last he arrived, by a most tedious and circuitous journey at Moscow, with a design to lay his case before the young and ardent Alexander, the then Emperor of Russia; with the hope that his benevolence, and a sense of what he had done for the vessel which had betrayed him, would incline his majesty to make some effort to return him to his island, and his family.
That this hope was not vain, the character of the good Alexander, since proved by a life of undeviating promptness to all acts of humanity, may be a sufficient voucher. But whether the homeward-bound chief, found, on his setting his foot again upon the ground whence he had been so cruelly rifled; and whence, indeed, the innocent confidence, the playful bravery of his fond wife, had urged him; whether he found his cherishly-remembered home, yet standing as he left it; and her, still the tender and the true to his never-wandered heart; and whether his children sprang to his knee, to share the parental caress; and the people around, raised the haloo of joy to the returned son of their king!—whether these fondly-expected greetings hailed his arrival, cannot be absolutely told; for the vessel that took him out, was to make the circuit of the globe, ere it returned; hence, from that, and other circumstances, the facts have never reached the narrator of this little history, of what was really the meeting between Laonce and his Berea; of the young chief, and the natives he had devotedly served! But can the faithful hearts of wedded love, doubt the one; or manly attachment suspect the other? For the honour of human nature, we will believe that all was right; and, in the faith of a humble Christian, we will believe, that "he who shewed mercy, found mercy!"; That he is now restored to his island-home, and to his happy, grateful family!
Among the poetical contributions are The Angels' Call, and Woman and Fame, by Mrs. Hemans; Carthage, and Stanzas, by T.K. Hervey; the Chapel on the Cliff, by W. Kennedy; all entitled to high praise. A Christian's Day, by Miss A.M. Porter, is a sweet devotional composition. The extract from one of Mr. Atherstone's unpublished books of the Fall of Nineveh, maintains the high opinion already formed of the published part. Mr. C. Swain has two beautiful pieces. We have only room to name those gems of the poetry, viz. Wearie's Well, and another beautiful ballad, by W. Motherwell; and some exquisite lines by the Rev. G. Croly; and to quote the following:—
CHANGE.
BY L.E.L.
The wind is sweeping o'er the hill;
It hath a mournful sound,
As if it felt the difference