shake, and almost to tear apart the planks of the building, and to make the wounded sufferers cry out at the agitation produced by the furniture in the room. Each moment the gale became louder and wilder, and the noise outside whenever it could be discerned betokened the agitation of men striving to retain their tents or their property, all alike hurried away on the terrible blast.

The records of that night have been given in full in the memorials of this illustrious campaign, affording alike matter for the humorist as for the sadder annalist of the sorrows and horrors of war. While here the tent blown down buried in the folds of its heavy ruins one man; in another place it excluded from home and shelter some one who already worn out with the fatigue of watching, or the exhaustion of recent fighting, too much needed the repose and shelter it had afforded him. There men running half dressed after articles of furniture, more precious than jewels in that land of the stranger, presented the most ridiculous ideas to the mind of those that looked on. against the low stone-wall a few articles of furniture had found a temporary stoppage, where men and beasts covered beneath the shelter, were anxious, if possible, to escape the buffet of the pitiless elements. In other places men were seen struggling against the folds of their canvass, which flapped backwards and forwards with great violence. In several instances the unfortunate occupants of their frail house, finding it impossible to keep out the drenching rain which came with the blast of wind, had determined to roll

Here

I

themselves round in their blankets wet as they were, till the morning, and they were suddenly exposed even in this miserable plight, by their tent being carried bodily away. They were shown to the eyes of their companions, or of those who joined in the passing chase after property, with figures similar to the animals which we see under water in summer, which we are told is the ante-natal-tomb of the coming gnat.

This scene outside however grotesque or painful, was far excelled in the latter quality in the temporary hospital, which by the repeated gusts of wind had become at last partially unroofed, and the unfortunate patients exposed alike to the driving rain and the violence of the wind. The suffering which this position brought upon Allen made him for the moment imagine that the last moment was come of his life; and he had time to thank GOD that those happier recollections of the earlier part of the night had brought him back to a communion with Him, too long suspended. The wounded, however, in the hospital, were naturally the first objects of consideration to those in authority on this tremendous night; and though some were hurried by the circumstance from this world of suffering more speedily than, humanly speaking, they would have been, most of them, and Allen among the rest, were conveyed with some difficulty down to other shelters which, though presenting but few comforts or facilities, yet were more protected from the elements and the weather; and afforded at least a good hope of their inmates being conveyed by a speedy means to the larger accommodation at Scutari.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE PASSAGE OF THE BLACK SEA.

THERE is a passage in Holy Scripture, which tells us that in the other world there "will be no more sea." The exact meaning of this statement it may be difficult for us to ascertain, but it brings to our mind of necessity some of those real sorrows, which the vast ocean of water which belts the world offers to

the human race. Independently of the severance of one nation from another, the hindrance to free and easy intercourse, and the vast perils that belong to the storm, and the tempest to those that make the ocean their home, there are so many other calamities that belong to that element, that we are almost inclined to imagine that we see the reason why the exclusion of the sea from the eternal state of bliss is a necessary portion of the beautiful description. Added to the usual and more recognized horrors of the deep, are those many woes whose cry of anguish has never reached the shore on which the home-friend has been waiting, and whose keen throes and throbs of suffering have been witnessed but by the companion in trouble. Upon the deep have been those passages in which crowded down beneath the low deck the negro from Africa or the slave torn from the tribes that inhabit the banks of the Mozambique stream have in vain besought for freedom even by the hand of death, and still more vainly attempted to touch the iron heart of their fellow-men with the cry of their anguish.

Those voices and cries have sounded far over the waste of water, and never their faintest echo either reached the home of the suppliant or the shore which boasted of the race of the free. Upon the deep the long hours of horrible expectation in the mutiny have been known but to those whose last sufferings have never been detailed to their families or their native land except by the murderer at the hour of deserved retribution. Upon the deep how many a last breath has been drawn-how many a last tale told from the burdened bosom of life but just before the corpse was wrapped in its hasty cerements, and committed to the fathomless depth below, when in days gone by the love of a mother had gazed upon that very form, and imagined that her own warm bosom offered scarcely repose sufficient for the aching head. Upon the deep too have been spent those many days of suffering, when the sick or the wounded borne from the field of strife or from the battle upon the wave have been carried to the nearest hospital, which might afford healing to the wound, or give relief and rest to the last hours of suffering life. Upon the deep has been heard but by the shark that waited for its human prey the wail of anguish from those who have been wrecked upon the lonely rock; and upon the waves of the deep the noise of artillery and the shout of the battle have been the only accompaniments which sounded over the death-cry of the British sailor. But whatever may have been the accustomed horrors of the sea, one was reserved for the present war, which perhaps had scarcely before had its exact parallel.

In that now too memorable passage between Balaklava and Scutari or Constantinople, taking up as it did sometimes more than three days and three nights in the tempestuous waters of the Euxine, there was one memorable occasion especially, when horrors met the eye, and cries of suffering, however patiently borne, struck upon the ear of humanity, in a way which will not be easily forgotten by those who either witnessed the scene or read the account. In the unprepared condition in which we were compelled to meet the present war the carriage of the wounded from the great battles of strife in the Crimea to the hospitals that had been erected upon the coasts of Turkey and Asia Minor was of an inconvenient and distressing kind. overcrowded with unfortunate men, whose condition needed not only room and fresh air, but the most anxious and continued attendance, became in the course of a few hours the vast sepulchres of those that they had received upon their decks; and ere they reached the end of their voyage, appeared more like the bearers of the dead than the refuge of the sick and wounded.

Ships

It was in a vessel somewhat of this description that Allen, with a number of those who had been wounded at Balaklava and the preceding battle of the Alma, was placed in order to be conveyed to the hospital that was erecting under British charity upon the coasts of Turkey and Asia Minor. Having been carried down to the vessel with all the care that could be bestowed on a wounded officer, he soon discovered that while he, in company with some seven or eight of his own immediate comrades, was to be conveyed in the ship