Page:Melancholy consequences of two sea storms.pdf/11

(11) better our situation. Again I began to yield to utter despair-again I thought of letting go my hold, and sinking at once: it is impossible, thought I, en to escape- why, then, prolong, for a few minutes, a painful existance that must at last be given? Yet, yet, the all-subduing love of life suggesting, that many things apparently impossible had me to pass; and I said to myself, If life is to be, why not lose it in a glorious struggle? Should survive it by accident, life will be rendered doubtless sweet to me, and I still more worthy of it by persevering fortitude.

"While I was employed in this train of reflection, I perceived some of the people collecting together, talking, and holding a consultation: it immediately occurred to me, that they were devising the plan for escaping from the wreck, and getting : and, so natural is it for man to cling to fellow creature for support in difficult or dangerous exigences, that I proposed to Mr. Hall to join m, and take a share in the execution of the plan observing to him at the same time that I was determined at all events to quit the vessel, and trust the protection and guidance of a superintending providence for the rest.

"As prodigality of life is, in some cases, the s of virtue and courage-so there are others in such it is vice, meanness and cowardice. True courage is, according to the circumstances under which it is to operate, as rigidly tenacious and vigi{{illegible} of life in one case, as it is indifferent and re{{illegible}tless in another; and I think it is a very strange contradiction in the human heart (although it often happens), that a man who has the most unbound courage, seeking death even in the canon's th, shall yet want the necessary resolution to e exertions to save his life in cases of o