Ship on Fire.

"The most outstanding incident of the whole voyage happened just before we got to the Cape of Good Hope, where we fell in with a ship on fire. She was the Isabella Kerr, bound from England to Calcutta with coal. She was terribly short of food and water, and to make matters worse her captain was ill. Captain Holloway and our doctor were pulled off to the stranger, and our ship also supplied them with what they wanted in the way of food and water. We kept company with the Isabella Kerr for quite a number of days, and she eventually left us when we were abreast of the Cape. She never reached Calcutta, and we heard afterwards that the fire broke out again, and that she was burned in the Indian Ocean. Her crew were rescued by a tea clipper. This Isabella Kerr was a fine sailer. I have seen her shorten sail while she was in our company, get almost out of sight of us astern, and then, loosening her canvas, show what she could do with everything set and the wind on the quarter. When we met her she had no flags that could be got at—through being battened down on account of the fire, I suppose—and to make her number and name she stood quite close in to us, and we could read the information that had been written on a board and hung over her side."

Mr. Davey says that when the Star of India got to Lyttelton, and the day arrived for landing, quite a number of the women shed tears as they took their last look at the good old ship which had been their home for so many weeks, and had brought them safely to the new land in which they hoped to better themselves.