“This is providential, truly!” exclaimed Mark.  “Your crooked stick, Bob, is a part of the frame of the pinnace of which you spoke, and which we had given up, as a thing not to be found on board!”

“You’re right, Mr. Mark, you’re right!” answered Bob—­“and I most have been oncommon stupid not to have thought of it, when it came so hard.  And if there’s one of the boat’s bones stowed in that place, there must be more to be found in the same latitude.”

This was true enough.  After working in that dark corner of the hold for several hours, all the materials of the intended craft were found and collected in the steerage.  Neither Mark nor Betts was a boat-builder, or a shipwright; but each had a certain amount of knowledge on the subject, and each well knew where every piece was intended to be put.  What a revolution this discovery made in the feelings of our young husband!  He had never totally despaired of seeing Bridget again, for that would scarce have comported with his youth and sanguine temperament; but the hope had, of late, become so very dim, as to survive only as that feeling will endure in the bosoms of the youthful and inexperienced Mark had lived a long time for his years; had seen more and performed far more than usually falls to persons of his age, and he was, by character, prudent and practical; but it would have been impossible for one who had lived as long and as well as himself, to give up every expectation of being restored to his bride, even in circumstances more discouraging than those in which he was actually placed.  Still, he had been slowly accustoming himself to the idea of a protracted separation, and had never lost sight of the expediency of making his preparations for passing his entire life in the solitary place where he and Betts had been cast by a mysterious and unexpected dispensation of a Divine Providence.  When Bob, from time to-time, insisted on his account of the materials for the pinnace being in the ship, Mark had listened incredulously, unconscious himself how much his mind had been occupied by Bridget when this part of the cargo had been taken in, and unwilling to believe such an acquisition could have been made without his knowledge.  Now that he saw it, however, a tumultuous rushing of all the blood in his body towards his heart, almost overpowered him, and the future entirely changed its aspects.  He did not doubt an instant, of the ability of Bob and himself to put these blessed materials together, or of their success in navigating the mild sea around them, for any necessary distance, in a craft of the size this must turn out to be.  A bright vista, with Bridget’s brighter countenance at its termination, glowed before his imagination, and a great deal of wholesome philosophy and Christian submission were unsettled, as it might be, in the twinkling of an eye, by this all-important discovery.  Mark had never abandoned the thought of constructing a little vessel with materials torn from the ship; but that would nave been a most laborious, as well as a doubtful experiment, while here was the problem solved, with a certainty and precision almost equal to one in mathematics!