the pumps, and found three feet of water in the well. Immediately double pumps were rigged, and the steady clinking of brakes added to the noises and terror of the scene.

It was a fearful night, and Captain Lane prayed Heaven that he might never see such another.

About half an hour after the squall first struck them--the captain of the Ocean Star was standing with his two officers on the quarter-deck, "conning the vessel by the feel of the wind and rain," keeping her dead before the gale--when there came a flash and a peal which made them cower almost to the decks.

"My God!" was the simultaneous exclamation of all. A long chain of lightning and a heavy ball of fire seemed to shoot from the sky, lighting up the whole sea, revealing, and at the same time striking, in its descent, a full-rigged brig, which, like themselves, was scudding before the gale under bare poles, a few cables' length off their port beam. The next instant, a fearful explosion, heard loud above the roaring storm, shook the sea, a volume of flame and fire shot up in the air, and when they looked again for the vessel, in the flashes of lightning, it was nowhere to be seen.

As the morning broke, the gale abated, and settled into a light breeze from the eastward. They made all sail, and stood to the southward with the wind abeam, hoping to fall in with some survivors of the wreck.

Captain Lane changed his wet garments for something more comfortable, refreshed himself with a strong cup of coffee, and, taking his glass, sought the foretopsail yard. About seven bells, he thought he discovered some object in the water three or four points off the lee bow. Hailing the deck to keep off for it, he very soon made out fragments of a vessel--spars, water casks, pieces of deck and, as they came still nearer, a boat; but the captain, even from his lofty perch, could see no sign of any one in it.

Descending to the deck, he ordered a boat to be cleared away, and, running as near as he dared to the wreck, he backed his maintopsail and took a long and earnest survey with his glass.

All hands were watching with anxious eyes the expression on the captain's face. He handed his glass to the mate, who carefully examined every fragment which appeared above water. The captain looked at the mate inquiringly; but neither said a word. The mate handed back the glass and shook his head sorrowfully.

Again the captain looked long and earnestly; the mate looked again, and again returned the glass:

"Poor fellows--we may as well fill away, sir!" he said sadly.

There was still considerable sea on, and the mere launching of a boat was attended with more than ordinary danger, added to which was that to be encountered from the broken spars and fragments of wreck drifting about. Captain Lane thought of all these dangers, and was about to give the order to "fill away the main-yard," when something seemed to say to him:

"There is some one in that boat!"

This impression was so strong that he felt as if it would be murder to leave the spot without making a more minute search, and he ordered the boat to be lowered at once. Jumping into the stern sheets, four good oars well manned soon brought him within the little field of fragments, in the centre of which the boat was floating. No wonder none of the crew was left,--the water literally swarmed with sharks.

Standing in the bow with a boat hook, the captain warded off pieces of wreck and gradually made his way to the strange boat.

The sight there which met his eyes Captain Lane never forgot to his dying day. When bowed down with old age, and his feeble steps were tottering on the verge of the grave, that scene came to him as vividly as on that terrible day. Lying in the bottom of the boat was the burnt, blackened and bruised form of a man, which, with some difficulty, the captain recognized as the handsome stranger who had visited him on the previous evening. Clinging to him, with her arms clasped tightly around his mutilated form, a clasp which even death could not break, her fair face pressed close to his blackened features, was the lifeless body of the most beautiful woman Captain Lane had ever seen. The look of agony, of commiseration, of tenderness, of pity, of horror and despair, which was sealed upon, those lifeless features was beyond the powers of description; but the saddest spectacle of all was a child, a little girl about one year old, clinging frantically to the breast of her dead mother, and gazing silently at them in frightened wonder.

For years, Captain Lane's eyes had not been dimmed with tears, but now the fountains of grief were opened up, and his cheeks were wet. He carefully entered the boat, felt of each cold body, laid his hand upon each silent heart, and waited in vain for an answering signal to his touch upon the pulse.

"It is all over," he said, and sitting down in the stern sheets of the boat, he took the child in his arms and sent his men back for sheets and shot and palm and needle and prayer-book. "They shall have Christian burial," declared the kind-hearted captain.

They went away and left him alone with the dead and the baby. The infant seemed to cling to him from that moment, and the Great Father above alone knows how strangely and rapidly those cords of love were cemented between the bluff, old bachelor sea-captain and the infant. That heart, which he had thought dead to all love since the awful day on board the English merchantman, when he saw the only being he ever loved dying, was suddenly thrilled by the tenderest emotions. Those sweet blue eyes were upturned to his face with a glance of imploring trust, and the captain cried:

"Yes, blow my eyes, if I don't stand by you, little one, as long as there is a stitch of canvas left!"

The time was very short until his men returned. Wrapping the dead in one shroud and winding sheet, with heavy shot well secured at their feet, the captain put the little child's lips to its mother's, giving her an unconscious kiss, which caused the men to brush their rough sleeves across their weather-beaten eyes. Then, reading with a broken voice, the last service for the dead, the shroud was closed, and the opening waters received them and bore them away to their last resting place.

Jumping into his boat, with the little stranger nestling in his arms, Captain Lane was soon aboard the Ocean Star, and with a fair wind and sunny skies was once more homeward bound. The captain seemed loath to relinquish his little charge. There was a goat on the vessel which furnished milk, and the cook prepared some dainty food for the little stranger.

"What is her name, captain?" he asked, while feeding the hungry child. She was not old enough to know her name, and there was not found about her clothes or in the boat anything whatever by which her name could possibly be known, so she had to be rechristened. What name should he give her? He reflected a moment and then, remembering the name on the stern of that black, mysterious vessel, answered:

"Morgianna!"

"Morgianna?" said the cook.

"Yes, Morgianna Lane! she is my adopted daughter."

The cook smiled at the thought of bluff old Captain Lane the bachelor having an adopted daughter.

After the perils and excitements of such a night, it was not strange that Captain Lane slept long and soundly. He had good officers, and when he retired he gave them orders not to disturb him, unless absolutely necessary, until he should awake.

They obeyed the injunction to the letter, and on the following morning he was awakened by hearing one of the crew ask in an undertone of the steward.

"How is little Morgianna this morning?"

"Little Morgianna," he said to himself; and then it all came back, and with it a strangely tender dream which had all night long haunted his slumbers. The captain rose hurriedly, dressed himself and inquired for the child, who had been resigned to the care of the cook. She was brought to him, a bright, cheerful little thing, just beginning to lisp