it might have been for ever! Twas the affair of but a second. Death came
to our sides, as it were, and departed ere the report of the gun had
ceased to roll over the waters of the reach. Something whizzed past my
ear, deafening and stupefying me for a moment--the next I saw my
much-valued friend Gore stretched at his length in the bottom of the
boat, and I perceived at a glance the danger we had incurred and
providentially escaped.

ACCIDENT TO LIEUTENANT GORE.

His fowling piece had burst in his hand, and flown away in fragments,
leaving only a small portion of the barrel at my feet. How it happened
that the coxswain and myself were unhurt seemed a miracle. I was on the
right of Mr. Gore, in the stern-sheets of the yawl, and the coxswain was
a little on the left, and over him, steering. Our preservation can only
be attributed to Him whose eye is on all his creatures and who disposes
of our lives as it seemeth good in his sight. Without intending to be
presumptuous, we may be permitted to believe that we were spared partly
on account of the service in which we were engaged--so beneficial to
humanity, so calculated to promote the spread of civilization, which must
ever be the harbinger of Christianity. At any rate it is not, in my
humble opinion, any impeachment of the wisdom of the Almighty, to imagine
that he determines the fortunes of men according to the work in which
they are engaged.

Mr. Gore's hand was dreadfully lacerated; but no bones were broken; and
on recovering from his swoon, the first words he uttered were: "Killed
the bird!"--an expression truly characteristic of a sportsman, and
evincing how exactly the mind, when its perception has been momentarily
suspended, reverts, on recovering, to the idea last present to it.