all
was lost! all was despair! I tried to scream--I tried to cry aloud to
Heaven to have mercy upon those brave and gallant souls who had trusted
their dearest possession--life itself--to the mercy of the deep; and
while I so tried to render so inefficient succour, I saw a small speck
in the sea, and my straining eyes perceived that it was a man floating
and clinging to a piece of the wreck, and I knew it was Mark Ingestrie." "But, my dear, surely you are not annoyed at a dream?" "It saddened me. I stretched out my arms to save him--I heard him
pronounce my name, and call upon me for help. 'Twas all in vain; he
battled with the waves as long as human nature could battle with them. He could do no more, and I saw him disappear before my anxious eyes." "Don't say you saw him, my dear, say you fancy you saw him." "It was such a fancy as I shall not lose the remembrance of for many a
day." "Well, well, after all, my dear, it's only a dream; and it seems to me,
without at all adverting to anything that should give you pain as
regards Mark Ingestrie, that you made a very foolish bargain; for only
consider how many difficulties might arise in the way of his keeping
faith with you. You know I have your happiness so much at heart that, if
Mark had been a worthy man and an industrious one, I should not have
opposed myself to your union; but, believe me, my dear Johanna, that a
young man with great facilities for spending money, and none whatever
for earning any, is just about the worst husband you could choose, and
such a man was Mark Ingestrie. But come, we will say nothing of this to
your mother; let the secret, if we may call it such, rest with me; and
if you can inform me in what capacity and in what vessel he left
England, I will not carry my prejudice so far against him as to hesitate
about making what inquiry I can concerning his fate." "I know nothing more, father; we parted, and never met again." "Well, well! dry your eyes, Johanna, and, as I go to Alderman Judd's,
I'll think over the matter, which, after all, may not be so bad as you
think. The lad is a good-enough looking lad, and has, I believe, a good
ability, if he would put it to some useful purpose; but if he goes
scampering about the world in an unsettled manner, you are well rid of
him, and as for his being dead, you must not conclude that by any means
for somehow or another, like a bad penny, these fellows always come
back." There was more consolation in the kindly tone of the spectacle-maker
than in the words he used; but, upon the whole, Johanna was well enough
pleased that she had communicated the secret to her father, for now, at
all events, she had some one to whom she could mention the name of Mark
Ingestrie, without the necessity of concealing the sentiment with which
she did so; and when her father had gone, she felt that, by the mere
relation of it to him, some of the terrors of her dream had vanished. She sat for some time in a pleasing reverie, till she was interrupted by
Sam, the shop-boy, who came into the parlour and said,--

"Please, Miss Johanna, suppose I was to go down to the docks and try and
find out for you Mr. Mark Ingestrie. I say, suppose I was to do that. I
heard it all, and if I do find him I'll soon settle him." "What do you mean?" "I means that I won't stand it; didn't I tell you, more than three weeks
ago, as you was the object of my infections? Didn't I tell you that when
aunt died, I should come in for the soap and candle business, and make
you my missus?" The only reply which Johanna gave to this was to rise and leave the
room, for her heart was too full of grief and sad speculation to enable
her to do now as she had often been in the habit of doing--viz., laugh
at Sam's protestations of affection, so he was left to chew the cud of
sweet and bitter fancy by himself. "A thousand d----s!" said he, when he entered the shop: "I always
suspected there was some other fellow, and now I know it I am ready to
gnaw my head off that ever I consented to come here. Confound him! I
hope he is at the bottom of the sea, and eat up by this time. Oh! I
should like to smash everybody. If I had my way now I'd just walk into
society at large, as they calls it, and let it know what one, two,
three, slap in the eye, is--and down it would go." Mr. Sam, in his rage, did upset a case of spectacles, which went down
with a tremendous crash, and which, however good imitation of the manner
in which society at large was to be knocked down, was not likely to be
at all pleasing to Mr. Oakley. "I have done it now," he said; "but never mind; I'll try the old dodge
whenever I break anything; that is, I'll place it in old Oakley's way,
and swear he did it. I never knew such an old goose; you may persuade
him into anything; the idea, now, of his pulling down all the shutters
this morning because I told him my aunt had the tooth-ache; that was a
go, to be sure. But I'll be revenged of that fellow who has took away, I
consider, Johanna from me; I'll let him know what a blighted heart is
capable of. He won't live long enough to want a pair spectacles, I'll be
bound, or else my name ain't Sam Bolt." CHAPTER III. A MAN IS LOST. The earliest dawn of morning was glistening upon the masts, the cordage,
and the sails of a fleet of vessels lying below Sheerness. The crews were rousing themselves from their night's repose, and to make
their appearance on the decks of the vessels, from which the night-watch
had just been relieved. A man-of-war, which had been the convoy of the fleet of merchantmen
through the channel, fired a gun as the first glimpse of the morning sun
fell upon her tapering masts. Then from a battery in the neighbourhood
came another booming report, and that was answered by another farther
off, and then another, until the whole chain of batteries that girded
the coast, for it was a time of war, had proclaimed the dawn of another
day. The effect was very fine, in the stillness of the early morn, of this
succession of reports; and as they died away in the distance like mimic
thunder, some order was given on board the man-of-war, and, in a moment,
the masts and cordage seemed perfectly alive with human beings clinging
to them in various directions. Then, as if by magic, or as if the ship
had been a living thing itself, and had possessed wings, which at the
mere instigation of a wish, could be spread far and wide, there
fluttered out such sheets of canvas as was wonderful to see; and, as
they caught the morning light, and the ship moved from the slight breeze
that sprang up from the shore, she looked, indeed, as if she

    "Walked the waters like a thing of life". The various crews of the merchantmen stood upon the decks of their
respective vessels, gazing after the ship-of-war, as she proceeded upon
another mission similar to the one she had just performed in protecting
the commerce of the country.