waves, when a voice cried from the shore,--

"And will you leave me behind? I have a right to run the same risks
with you; I wish to take my part." The mother threw herself into the
bark, which rose for a moment on the menacing crest of an enormous
wave, then disappeared, swallowed up in the furrow left between two
mountains of water.

In the mean while, the fog lifted, and a group of shipwrecked people
were seen clinging to the sharp points of a ledge of rocks upon
which beat the hull of a ship, split in two.

"They come nearer," cried one of them. "O, that terrible wave has
carried them farther off."

"Let us thank God for that," said the captain; "it might have dashed
them against the reef."

"They will arrive too late," said a poor mother who pressed to her
heart an infant already stiff and motionless with cold.

"They are making superhuman efforts," said the captain. "Courage,
brave hearts!" And he raised a white handkerchief.

The mother uttered a loud cry. She had just discovered that the
child that she was trying to warm was dead.

At this moment, the bark made a desperate effort to land; but a
furious wave carried it off for a third time. It whirled round and
round, as if taken into one of those bottomless gulfs which the