The Massachusetts Spy

THE SKELETON OF THE WRECK.

[From the London Kaleidoscope.]

While Sir Michael Moore was in the command of the Amethyst frigate, and was cruising in the Bay of Biscay, the wreck of a merchant ship drove past. Her deck was just above water; her lower masts alone standing. Not a soul could be seen on board, but there was a cambouse on deck, which had the appearance of having been recently patched with old canvas and tarpauling, as if to afford shelter to some forlorn remnant of the crew. It blew at this time a strong gale; but Sir Michael, listening only to the dictates of humanity, ordered the ship to be put about, and sent off a boat with instructions to board the wreck; and ascertain whether there was any being still surviving whom the help of his fellow man might save from the grasp of death. The boat rowed towards the drifting mast, and while struggling with the difficulty of getting through a high running sea close along side, the crew shouting all the time as loud as they could, an object, like in appearance to a bundle of clothes, was observed to roll out of the cambouse, apparently against the lee shrouds of the mast. With the end of a boat-hook they managed to get hold of it, and hauled it into the boat, when it proved to be the trunk of a man, bent head and knees together, and so wasted as scarce to be felt within the ample clothes which had once fitted it in a state of life and strength. The boat's crew hastened back to the Amethyst with this miserable remnant of mortality; and so small was it in bulk that a lad of fourteen years of age was able, with his own hands, to lift it into the ship. When placed on deck, it showed, for the first time, to the astonishment of all, signs of returning life; it tried to move, and next moment muttered in a hollow sepulchral tone, "there is another man." The instant these words were heard, Sir Michael ordered the boats to shove off again for the wreck. The sea having now become somewhat smoother, they succeeded this time in boarding the wreck; and looking into the cambouse they found two other human bodies, wasted, like the one they saved, to the very bones, but without the least spark of life remaining. They were sitting in a shrunk up posture, a hand of one resting on a tin pot in which there was one gill of water; and a hand of the other reaching to the deck, as if to regain a bit of salt beef, of the size of a walnut, which had dropped from its nerveless grasp. Unfortunate men! They had starved on their scanty store, till they had not strength remaining to lift the last morsel to their mouths! The boat's crew having completed their last melancholy survey, returned on board, where they found the attention of the ship's company engrossed by their efforts to preserve the generous skeleton, who seemed to have just life to breathe the remembrance, that there was still "another man," his companion in suffering, to be saved.

Capt. S. committed him to the special charge of the surgeon, who spared no means which humanity or skill could suggest to achieve the noble object of creating anew, as it were, a fellow-creature, whom the most unparalleled famine had stripped of almost every living energy. For three weeks he scarcely ever left his patient, giving him nourishment with his own hand every five or ten minutes; and, at the end of three weeks more, the "Skeleton of the Wreck" was seen walking on the deck of the Amethyst and, to the surprise of all who recollected that he had been lifted into the ship by a cabin boy, presented the stately figure of a man nearly six feet high.