Page:Devonshire Characters and Strange Events.djvu/851

Rh seems to me familiar; yet I am certain that I was never in your vessel before. It is very perplexing, May I ask what your mate saw?"

Thereupon Bruce related the circumstances already detailed.

The above extraordinary account was related to Mr. Robert Owen, formerly American Minister at Naples, by Captain J. S. Clarke, of the Julia Hallock, a schooner trading in 1859 between New York and Cuba, who had received it directly from Robert Bruce himself. They sailed together for nearly two years, in 1836 and 1837; so that Captain Clarke had the story from the mate about eight years after the occurrence. Bruce after that became master of the brig Comet, trading to New Brunswick, and she was eventually lost at sea, and Bruce is believed to have perished in her.

In reply to a question as to the character which Bruce bore for uprightness, Captain Clarke replied: "As truthful and straightforward a man as ever I met in my life. We were as intimate as brothers; and two men can't be together, shut up for nearly two years in the same ship, without getting to know whether they can trust one another's word or not. He always spoke of the circumstance in terms of reverence, as of an incident that seemed to bring him nearer to God and to another world than anything that had ever happened to him in his life before. I'd stake my life upon it that he was speaking the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in the very extraordinary account which I have related to you just as he delivered it to me."

Such is the story, and it is much to be regretted that there is no confirmation or other testimony from the two captains, or from any others who were in the vessel.

It is given by the Rev. Bourchier Wrey Savile, in his Apparitions: a Narrative of Facts. London, 1874.