when his kind and considerate master
took it from his back, put it upon his own, and was staggering
along with it, when Alexander, who had been watching him, walked
up, and quietly touching him on the shoulder said, " Friend,
carry it a little farther, to thine own tent, for it is all thine
own."
He did not see the connection between helping a poor donkey and
getting a fortune, but there was.
The working men of Edinburgh and Glasgow, wishing to perpetuate
the name of Ballantyne, clubbed together and built a lifeboat
with the name of Edinburgh and Ballantyne, in honour of the author
of "The Lifeboat," and on December 17th, 1866, it was
to be seen near the Broomielaw, Glasgow, on show; and suspended
also on the wall was a box to receive the contributions of those
visitors who should call to see the lifeboat, and wish to lend
a hand toward her outfit, which wanted completing, and to help
keeping her when afloat. Among those who came to see her before
she was sent to her station, Port Logan, on the Wigtownshire coast,
was the wife of the captain of the bark
Strathlevin, accompanied by her children.
A sailor's wife and children would naturally look at the lifeboat
with different feelings from a landsman. I was born on the sea,
and remember how on stormy nights were heard, tales of perils
in the deep. One can imagine the stories of the dangers of the
sea those boys had listened to, and whilst looking at the boat,
the thought may, and probably did, come, " If father was
in such a plight, and his life hanging on the strength of the
arm that was taking such gallant strokes with the sea." So
she lifted up her boys one after the other to drop the silver
coins she had just taken out of her pocket into the box for the
fund.
This is a very simple story - yes; but exactly one year after
this, December 17th, 1867, a bark was caught in the cold, wild
weather off the Wigtownshire coasts, and driven on the rocks.
The situation was desperate. The vessel would soon break up; the
fifteen souls who clung to her rigging saw, that unless they were
soon rescued death must be their fate; but happily they were seen
by watchers on shore, and very soon the captain of the Strathlevin
saw the lifeboat coming, for the vessel was none other than the
Glasgow bark Strathlevin, and the captain was the husband of the
lady who lifted up her sons to drop the money into the box that
was to set the craft in motion. But this was not all the marvels
of that strange coincidence. When the lifeboat warped alongside,
and took the fifteen helpless sailors off the wreck safely, she
proved to be none
