The Sun.
London, England, 1864-01-27 00:00:00

A SHIP ON FIRE !

Never while I live, and my senses remain, can I
forget my next awakening. Did I still dream, or
was it indeed a reality ? The whole ship seemed

shattered into fragments—l was hurled from my
bed, and I stood in the darkness of death. Is it the
sea that bursts in a dense volume into the cabin ?
The decks seem to reel and quiver, to rise and fall.
Now I thought it was perpendicular, then that the
raging water was surging over its side up to the
top. Stifled, I gasped for breath, the air was
charged with sulphur, and the atmosphere such
that it was death to remain. My mind became a
moving panorama. The pictures are now indistinct,
but, oh ! how vividly my whale life passed on the
shifting scenes, with one dreadful certainty, that it
was death that was now dropping the curtain on
my earthly stage. The must distinct feeling I re-
member of this moment of painful existence was
—that this was death. Still, the whole period of
the trance was but a moment; then instinct took
the place of shattered reason, and it is amazing how
rightly it guides. I found my hand on the door;
by a great effort I pushed it open, and a rush of
fresh air cleared away from my brain much of the
shock from which I was suffering. Immediately
my husband was standing by my side, and amidst
the stillness that followed I heard his voice as he
called loudly to those on deck for the skylights to
be raised. The cabin was in utter ruin, the tables
shattered, the chairs broken, and the place strewed
with fragments of glass. At my feet an awful chasm
yawned. Far down I could see a bright glare that
told the ship was on fire. The explosion had passed
close by where we slept, torn up the decks, both
this and that beneath, and blown away the after -
companion ladder by which we gained the poop.
Fragments of the brass balusters alone hung down,
which my husband seizing, by a vigorous effort, he
gained the poop; then, stooping down, he grasped
my upraised hands, and in a few minutes I was
lifted to the top. I felt as if the weight of worlds
was in my limbs, and that I was powerless to strug-
gle against the mountain crushing me down. My
mind was keenly active, though my body was
powerless, and I knew that it required the greatest
exertion to raise me to the deck ; yet I could do
nothing to assist myself, though imagination kept
vividly before me the picture of the awful fiery
chasm down which I should be precipitated if my
husband failed in his effort. The change was
something more than earthly when I stood on the
deck, breathing the pure air, and looking on the
tranquil shore of England, quietly resting, on this
balmy morning, in the moon's soft light. I was
there before the ship recovered from the shock ; but
then arose the wildest screams, and a tumult burst
forth as if Bedlam had broken loose. I heard
Colonel M. give directions to a soldier who rushed
up, and 1 saw him grasp the arm of a man who
staggered as if he would fall, and place him on a
seat. This was the pilot, who had left the deck but
an hour before for his first sleep for nights, when
he was blown from the toddy-table, where a bed
had been made for him, through the skylight up
to the poop. Then he disappeared, and I was left
in the dress I had escaped in from my bed. My
mind was still full of a dreamy though vivid idea
of the actual circumstances, but, by degrees, the full
reality came before me. The ship was loaded with
saltpetre. What if another explosion should blow
us into fragments! The dim coast was miles away,
the fire rapidly gaining, and seven hundred human,,
beings on board. " Can we all be save
the d . ,
I
mentally exclaimed. " H !" The la
ow dreadful sc!ne
will be as it draws to its final close dies,
escaping through the ports of their cabins,
i now
.
began to reach the poop, and the ship was n de-
scribable commotion. To add to the alarm, a woman
of unsound mind ran up the main gangway, utter-
in.. fearful cries. I turned towards her, and saw
that in her arms she carried a child charred to a
cinder. "Jt is not yours," exclaimed a soldier near.
Sue immediately placed the little corpse on the
deck, and speeded down again for her own little
boy.—.lll-rs.Muter's Travels and Adventures.

CURIOUS DOCUMENT Alexander von Hum-
boldt was obliged to issue at the age of 91 :
~ Labouring under extreme depression of spirits, the result
of a correspondence which daily increases, and which
makes a yearly average of hem sixteen hundred to
two thousand letters and pamphlets on thingsvice entirely
foreign to me—manuscripts on which my ad de-
manded, schemes of emigration and colonisation, invoices
of models, machinery, and objects of natural history, in-
quiries on balloons, demands for autographs, offers to nurse
or amuse me—l once more publicly invite all those who
desire my welfare, to try and persuade the people of the
two continents not to be so busy about me, and not take
my house for the office of a directory, in order that, with
the decay of my physical and intellectual strength, I may
enjoy some leisure, and have time to work. Let
,not this
appeal, to which I only resorted with reluctance, be inter.
prated with malevolence,—" ALEXANDER VON HUM.
zoLDT."