And this general observation was verified on the present occasion, as it had been in the Indian mutiny and many other crises.

Hazel came out.
He encouraged the men out of his multifarious stores of learning.

He related at length stories of wrecks and sufferings at sea; which, though they had long been in print, were most of them new to these poor fellows.
He told them, among the rest, what the men of the _Bona Dea,_ waterlogged at sea, had suffered--twelve days without any food but a rat and a kitten--yet had all survived.

He gave them some details of the _Wager,_ the _Grosvenor,_ the _Corbin,_ the _Medusa;_ but, above all, a most minute account of the _Bounty,_ and Bligh's wonderful voyage in an open boat, short of provisions.

He moralized on this, And showed his fellow-sufferers it was discipline and self-denial from the first that had enabled those hungry specters to survive, and to traverse two thousand eight hundred miles of water, in those very seas; and that in spite of hunger, thirst, disease and rough weather.
By these means he diverted their minds in some degree from their own calamity, and taught them the lesson they most needed.
The poor fellows listened with more interest than you could have thought possible under the pressure of bodily distress.