University of Virginia Library

1. THE
RED ROVER,
A TALE. VOL. II.

CHAPTER I.

—Shakspeare.

The weight of the tempest had been felt at that
hapless moment when Earing and his unfortunate
companions were precipitated from their giddy elevation
into the sea. Though the wind continued to
blow long after this fatal event, it was with a constantly
diminishing power. As the gale decreased,
the sea began to rise, and the vessel to labour in
proportion. Then followed two hours of anxious
watchfulness on the part of Wilder, during which
the whole of his professional knowledge was needed,
in order to keep the despoiled hull of the Bristol
trader from becoming a prey to the greedy waters.
His consummate skill, however, proved equal to the
task that was required at his hands; and, just as the
symptoms of day were becoming visible along the
east, both wind and waves were rapidly subsiding
together. During the whole of this doubtful period,
our adventurer did not receive the smallest assistance
from any of the crew, with the exception of two
experienced seamen whom he had previously stationed
at the wheel. But to this neglect he was indifferent;
since little more was required than his own
judgment, seconded, as it faithfully was, by the exertions
of the mariners more immediately under his
eye.

The day dawned on a scene entirely different from
that which had marked the tempestuous deformity

of the night. The whole fury of the winds appeared
to have been expended in their precocious effort.
From the moderate gale, to which they had fallen
by the end of the middle watch, they further altered
to a vacillating breeze; and, ere the sun had risen,
the changeful air had subsided into a flat calm. The
sea went down as suddenly as the power which had
raised it vanished; and, by the time the broad golden
light of the sun was shed fairly and fully upon
the unstable element, it lay unruffled and polished,
though still gently heaving in swells so long and heavy
as to resemble the placid respiration of a sleeping
infant.

The hour was still early, and the serene appearance
of the sky and the ocean gave every promise
of a day which might be passed in devising the expedients
necessary to bring the ship again, in some
measure, under the command of her people.

“Sound the pumps,” said Wilder, observing that
the crew were appearing from the different places
in which they had bestowed their cares and their
persons together, during the later hours of the night.

“Do you hear me, sir?” he added sternly, observing
that no one moved to obey his order. “Let the
pumps be sounded, and the ship cleared of every
inch of water.”

Nighthead, to whom Wilder had now addressed
himself, regarded his Commander with an oblique
and sullen eye, and then exchanged singularly intelligent
glances with his comrades, before he saw fit
to make the smallest motion towards compliance.
But there was that, in the authoritative mien of his
superior, which finally induced him to comply. The
dilatory manner in which the seamen performed the
duty was quickened, however, as the rod ascended,
and the well-known signs of a formidable leak met
their eyes. The experiment was repeated with
greater activity, and with far more precision.

“If witchcraft can clear the hold of a ship that
is already half full of water,” said Nighthead, casting
another sullen glance towards the attentive Wilder,
“the sooner it is done the better; for the whole
cunning of something more than a bungler in the
same will be needed, in order to make the pumps of
the `Royal Caroline' suck!”

“Does the ship leak?” demanded his superior,
with a quickness of utterance which sufficiently
proclaimed how important he deemed the intelligence.

“Yesterday, I would have boldly put my name to
the articles of any craft that floats the ocean; and,
had the Captain asked me if I understood her nature
and character, as certain as that my name is Francis
Nighthead, I should have told him, yes. But I find
that the oldest seaman may still learn something of
the water; though it should be got in crossing a ferry
in a flat.”

“What mean you, sir?” demanded Wilder, who,
for the first time, began to note the mutinous looks
assumed by his mate, no less than the threatening
manner in which he was seconded by the crew.
“Have the pumps rigged without delay, and clear
the ship of the water.”

Nighthead slowly complied with the former part
of this order; and, in a few moments, every thing
was arranged to commence the necessary, and, as it
would seem, urgent duty of pumping. But no man
lifted his hand to the laborious employment. The
quick eye of Wilder, who had now taken the alarm,
was not slow in detecting this reluctance; and he
repeated the order more sternly, calling to two of
the seamen, by name, to set the example of obedience.
The men hesitated, giving an opportunity to
the mate to confirm them, by his voice, in their
mutinous intentions.

“What need of hands to work a pump in a vessel

like this?” he said, with a coarse laugh, but in which
secret terror struggled strangely with open malice.
“After what we have all seen this night, none here
will be amazed, should the vessel begin to spout out
the brine like a breathing whale.”

“What am I to understand by this hesitation, and
by this language?” said Wilder, approaching Nighthead
with a firm step, and an eye too proud to quail
before the plainest symptoms of insubordination.
“Is it you, sir, who should be foremost in exertion
at a moment like this, who dare to set an example
of disobedience?”

The mate recoiled a pace, and his lips moved;
still he uttered no audible reply. Wilder once more
bade him, in a calm and authoritative tone, lay his
own hands to the brake. Nighthead then found his
voice, in time to make a flat refusal; and, at the next
moment, he was felled to the feet of his indignant
Commander, by a blow he had neither the address
nor the power to resist. This act of decision was
succeeded by one single moment of breathless, wavering
silence among the crew; and then the common
cry, and the general rush of every man upon our defenceless
and solitary adventurer, were the signals
that open hostility had commenced. A shriek from
the quarter-deck arrested their efforts, just as a dozen
hands were laid violently upon the person of
Wilder, and, for the moment, occasioned a truce. It
was the fearful cry of Gertrude, which possessed
even the influence to still the savage intentions of a
set of beings so rude and so unnurtured as those
whose passions had just been awakened into fierce
activity. Wilder was released; and all eyes turned,
by a common impulse, in the direction of the sound.

During the more momentous hours of the past
night, the very existence of the passengers below
had been forgotten by most of those whose duty
kept them to the deck. If they had been recalled

at all to the recollection of any, it was at those fleeting
moments when the mind of the young mariner,
who directed the movements of the ship, found leisure
to catch stolen glimpses of softer scenes than
the wild warring of the elements that was so actively
raging before his eyes. Nighthead had named
them, as he would have made allusion to a part of
the cargo, but their fate had little influence on his
hardened nature. Mrs Wyllys and her charge had
therefore remained below during the whole period,
perfectly unapprised of the disasters of the intervening
time. Buried in the recesses of their births,
they had heard the roaring of the winds, and the incessant
washing of the waters; but these usual accompaniments
of a storm had served to conceal
the crashing of masts, and the hoarse cries of the
mariners. For the moments of terrible suspense,
while the Bristol trader lay on her side, the better
informed governess had, indeed, some fearful glimmerings
of the truth; but, conscious of her uselessness,
and unwilling to alarm her less instructed companion,
she had sufficient self-command to be mute.
The subsequent silence, and comparative calm, induced
her to believe that she had been mistaken in
her apprehensions; and, long ere morning dawned,
both she and Gertrude had sunk into sweet and refreshing
slumbers. They had risen and mounted to
the deck together, and were still in the first burst of
their wonder at the desolation which met their gaze,
when the long-meditated attack on Wilder was made.

“What means this awful change?” demanded Mrs
Wyllys, with a lip that quivered, and a cheek which,
notwithstanding the extraordinary power she possessed
over her feelings, was blanched to the colour
of death.

The eye of Wilder was glowing, and his brow
was dark as those heavens from which they had just

so happily escaped, as he answered, menacing his
assailants with an arm,—

“It means mutiny, Madam; rascally, cowardly
mutiny!”

“Could mutiny strip a vessel of her masts, and
leave her a helpless log upon the sea?”

“Hark ye, Madam!” roughly interrupted the mate;
“to you I will speak freely; for it is well known
who you are, and that you came on board the `Caroline'
a paying passenger. This night have I seen
the heavens and the ocean behave as I have never
seen them behave before. Ships have been running
afore the wind, light and buoyant as corks, with all
their spars stepped and steady, when other ships
have been shaved of every mast as close as the razor
sweeps the chin. Cruisers have been fallen in with,
sailing without living hands to work them; and, all
together, no man here has ever before passed a middle
watch like the one gone by.”

“And what has this to do with the violence I have
just witnessed? Is the vessel fated to endure every
evil!—Can you explain this, Mr Wilder?”

“You cannot say, at least, you had no warning of
danger,” returned Wilder, smiling bitterly.

“Ay, the devil is obliged to be honest on compulsion,”
resumed the mate. “Each of his imps sails
with his orders; and, thank Heaven! however he
may be minded to overlook the same, he has neither
courage nor power to do it. Otherwise, a peaceful
voyage would be such a rarity, in these unsettled
times, that few men would be found hardy enough
to venture on the water for a livelihood.—A warning!
Ay, we will own you gave us open and frequent
warning. It was a notice, that the consignee should
not have overlooked, when Nicholas Nichols met
with the hurt, as the anchor was leaving the bottom.
I never knew an accident happen at such a time,

and no evil come of it. Then, had we a warning
with the old man in the boat; besides the never-failing
ill luck of sending the pilot violently out of
the ship. As if all this wasn't enough, instead of
taking a hint, and lying peaceably at our anchors,
we got the ship under way, and left a safe and friendly
harbour of a Friday, of all the days in a week![1] So far from being surprised at what has happened, I
only wonder at finding myself still a living man; the
reason of which is simply this, that I have given my
faith where faith only is due, and not to unknown
mariners and strange Commanders. Had Edward
Earing done the same, he might still have had a
plank between him and the bottom; but, though half
inclined to believe in the truth, he had, after all, too
much leaning to superstition and credulity.”

This laboured and characteristic profession of
faith in the mate, though sufficiently intelligible to
Wilder, was still a perfect enigma to his female listeners.
But Nighthead had not formed his resolution
by halves, neither had he gone thus far, with
any intention to stop short of the completion of his
whole design. In a very few summary words, he
explained to Mrs Wyllys the desolate condition of
the ship, and the utter improbability that she could
continue to float many hours; since actual observation
had told him that her lower hold was already
half full of water.

“And what is then to be done?” demanded the
governess, casting a glance of bitter distress towards
the pallid and attentive Gertrude. “Is there no sail

in sight, to take us from the wreck? or must we
perish in our helplessness!”

“God protect us from any more strange sails!”
exclaimed the surly Nighthead. “There we have
the pinnace hanging at the stern, and here must be
land at some forty leagues to the north-west. Water
and food are plenty, and twelve stout hands can soon
pull a boat to the continent of America; that is, always
provided, America is left where it was seen no later
than at the sun-set of yesterday.”

“You then propose to abandon the vessel?”

“I do. The interest of the owners is dear to all
good seamen, but life is sweeter than gold.”

“The will of heaven be done! But surely you
meditate no violence against this gentleman, who, I
am quite certain, has governed the vessel, in very
critical circumstances, with a discretion far beyond
his years!”

Nighthead muttered his intentions, whatever they
might be, to himself; and then he walked apart, apparently
to confer with the men, who already seemed
but too well disposed to second any of his views,
however mistaken or lawless. During the few moments
of suspense that succeeded, Wilder stood silent
and composed, a smile of something like scorn
struggling about his lip, and maintaining the air rather
of one who had power to decide on the fortunes of
others, than of a man whose own fate was most
probably at that very moment in discussion. When
the dull minds of the seamen had arrived at their
conclusion, the mate advanced to proclaim the result,
Indeed, words were unnecessary, in order to make
known a very material part of their decision; for
a party of the men proceeded instantly to lower the
stern-boat into the water, while others set about
supplying it with the necessary means of subsistence.

“There is room for all the Christians in the ship
to stow themselves in this pinnace,” resumed Nighthead;

“and as for those that place their dependance
on any particular persons, why, let them call for aid
where they have been used to receive it.”

“From all which I am to infer that it is your intention,”
said Wilder, calmly, “to abandon the wreck,
and your duty?”

The half-awed but still resentful mate returned a
look in which fear and triumph struggled for the
mastery, as he answered,—

“You, who know how to sail a ship without a
crew, can never want a boat! Besides, you shall
never say to your friends, whoever they may be, that
we leave you without the means of reaching the land,
if you are indeed a land-bird at all. There is the
launch.”

“There is the launch! but well do you know, that,
without masts, all your united strengths could not
lift it from the deck; else would it not be left.”

“They that took the masts out of the `Caroline'
can put them in again,” rejoined a grinning seaman;
“it will not be an hour after we leave you, before a
sheer-hulk will come alongside, to step the spars
again, and then you may go cruise in company.”

Wilder appeared to be superior to any reply. He
began to pace the deck, thoughtful, it is true, but still
composed, and entirely self-possessed. In the mean
time, as a common desire to quit the wreck as soon
as possible actuated all the men, their preparations
advanced with incredible activity. The wondering
and alarmed females had hardly time to think clearly
on the extraordinary situation in which they found
themselves, before they saw the form of the helpless
Master borne past them to the boat; and, in another
minute, they were summoned to take their places at
his side.

Thus imperiously called upon to act, they began
to feel the necessity of decision. Remonstrances,
they feared, would be useless; for the fierce and

malignant looks which were cast, from time to time,
at Wilder, as the labour proceeded, proclaimed the
danger of awakening such obstinate and ignorant
minds into renewed acts of violence. The governess
bethought her of an appeal to the wounded man;
but the look of wild care which he had cast about
him, on being lifted to the deck, and the expression
of bodily and mental pain that gleamed across his
rugged features, as he buried them in the blankets by
which he was enveloped, but too plainly announced
that little assistance was, in his present condition, to
be expected from him.

“What remains for us to do?” she at length demanded
of the seemingly insensible object of her
concern.

“I would I knew!” he answered quickly, casting
a keen but hurried glance around the whole horizon.
“It is not improbable that they should reach the
shore. Four-and-twenty hours of calm will assure
it.”

“And if otherwise?”

“A blow at north-west, or from any quarter off
the land, will prove their ruin.”

“But the ship?”

“If deserted, she must sink.”

“Then will I speak in your favour to these hearts
of flint! I know not why I feel such interest in
your welfare, inexplicable young man, but much
would I suffer rather than believe that you incurred
this peril.”

“Stop, dearest Madam,” said Wilder, respectfully
arresting her movement with his hand. “I cannot
leave the vessel.”

“We know not yet. The most stubborn natures
may be subdued; even ignorance can be made to
open its ears at the voice of entreaty. I may prevail.”

“There is one temper to be quelled—one reason

to convince—one prejudice to conquer, over which
you have no power.”

“Whose is that?”

“My own.”

“What mean you, sir? Surely you are not weak
enough to suffer resentment against such beings to
goad you to an act of madness?”

“Do I seem mad?” demanded Wilder. “The
feeling by which I am governed may be false, but,
such as it is, it is grafted on my habits, my opinions;
I will say, my principles. Honour forbids me to
quit a ship that I command, while a plank of her is
afloat.”

“Of what use can a single arm prove at such a
crisis?”

“None,” he answered, with a melancholy smile.

“I must die, in order that others, who may be serviceable
hereafter, should do their duty.”

Both Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude stood regarding
his kindling eye, but otherwise placid countenance,
with looks whose concern amounted to horror. The
former read, in the very composure of his mien, the
unalterable character of his resolution; and the latter,
shuddering as the prospect of the cruel fate
which awaited him crowded on her mind, felt a
glow about her own youthful heart that almost
tempted her to believe his self-devotion commendable.
But the governess saw new reasons for apprehension
in the determination of Wilder. If she had
hitherto felt reluctance to trust herself and her ward
with a band such as that which now possessed the
sole authority, it was more than doubly increased by
the rude and noisy summons she received to hasten
and take her place among them.

“Would to Heaven I knew in what manner to
choose!” she exclaimed. “Speak to us, young man,
as you would counsel mother and sister.”

“Were I so fortunate as to possess relatives so

near and dear,” returned the other, with emphasis,
“nothing should separate us at a time like this.”

“Is there hope for those who remain on the
wreck?”

“But little.”

“And in the boat?”

It was near a minute before Wilder made any answer.
He again turned his look around the bright
and broad horizon, and he appeared to study the
heavens, in the direction of the distant Continent,
with infinite care. No omen that could indicate the
probable character of the weather escaped his vigilance,
while his countenance reflected all the various
emotions by which he was governed, as he gazed.

“As I am a man, Madam,” he answered with fervour,
“and one who is bound not only to counsel
but to protect your sex, I distrust the time. I think
the chance of being seen by some passing sail equal
to the probability that those who adventure in the
pinnace will ever reach the land.”

“Then let us remain,” said Gertrude, the blood,
for the first time since her re-appearance on deck,
rushing into her colourless cheeks, until they appeared
charged to fulness. “I like not the wretches
who would be our companions in that boat.”

“Away, away!” impatiently shouted Nighthead.
“Each minute of light is a week of life to us all, and
every moment of calm, a year. Away, away, or we
leave you!”

Mrs Wyllys answered not, but she stood the image
of doubt and painful indecision. Then the plash of
oars was heard in the water, and at the next moment
the pinnace was seen gliding over the element, impelled
by the strong arms of six powerful rowers.

“Stay!” shrieked the governess, no longer undetermined;
“receive my child, though you abandon
me!”

A wave of the hand, and an indistinct rumbling

in the coarse tones of the mate, were the only answers
given to her appeal. A long, deep, and breathing
silence followed among the deserted. The grim
countenances of the seamen in the pinnace soon became
confused and indistinct; and then the boat itself
began to lessen on the eye, until it seemed no
more than a dark and distant speck, rising and falling
with the flow and reflux of the blue waters. During
all this time, not even a whispered word was
spoken. Each of the party gazed, until sight grew
dim, at the receding object; and it was only when
his organs refused to convey the tiny image to his
brain, that Wilder himself shook off the impression
of the sort of trance into which he had fallen. His
look became bent on his companions, and he pressed
his hand upon his forehead, as though his brain were
bewildered by the deep responsibility he had assumed
in advising them to remain. But the sickening
apprehension quickly passed away, leaving in its
place a firmer mind, and a resolution too often tried,
in scenes of doubtful issue, to be long or easily shaken
from its calmness and self-possession.

“They are gone!” he exclaimed, breathing long
and heavily, like one whose respiration had been
unnaturally suspended.

“They are gone!” echoed the governess, turning
an eye, that was contracting with the intensity of
her care, on the marble-like and motionless form of
her pupil. “There is no longer any hope.”

The look that Wilder bestowed, on the same silent
but lovely statue, was scarcely less expressive than
the gaze of her who had nurtured the infancy of the
Southern Heiress, in innocence and love. His brow
grew thoughtful, and his lips became compressed,
while all the resources of his fertile imagination and
long experience gathered in his mind, in engrossing,
intense reflection.

“Is there hope?” demanded the governess, who

was watching the change of his working countenance,
with an attention that never swerved.

The gloom passed away from his swarthy features,
and the smile that lighted them was like the radiance
of the sun, as it breaks through the blackest vapours
of the drifting gust.

“There is!” he said with firmness; “our case is
far from desperate.”

“Then, may He who rules the ocean and the
land receive the praise!” cried the grateful governess,
giving vent to her long-suppressed agony in a
flood of tears.

Gertrude cast herself upon the neck of Mrs
Wyllys, and for a minute their unrestrained emotions
were mingled.

“And now, my dearest Madam,” said Gertrude,
leaving the arms of her governess, “let us trust to
the skill of Mr Wilder; he has foreseen and foretold
this danger; equally well may he predict our
safety.”

“Foreseen and foretold!” returned the other, in
a manner to show that her faith in the professional
prescience of the stranger was not altogether so unbounded
as that of her more youthful and ardent
companion. “No mortal could have foreseen this
awful calamity; and least of all, foreseeing it, would
he have sought to incur its danger! Mr Wilder, I
will not annoy you with requests for explanations
that might now be useless, but you will not refuse
to communicate your grounds of hope.”

Wilder hastened to relieve a curiosity that he well
knew must be as painful as it was natural. The
mutineers had left the largest, and much the safest,
of the two boats belonging to the wreck, from a desire
to improve the calm, well knowing that hours of
severe labour would be necessary to launch it, from
the place it occupied between the stumps of the two
principal masts, into the ocean. This operation,

which might have been executed in a few minutes
with the ordinary purchases of the ship, would have
required all their strength united, and that, too, to
be exercised with a discretion and care that would
have consumed too many of those moments which
they rightly deemed to be so precious at that wild
and unstable season of the year. Into this little ark
Wilder proposed to convey such articles of comfort
and necessity as he might hastily collect from the
abandoned vessel; and then, entering it with his
companions, to await the critical instant when the
wreck should sink from beneath them.

“Call you this hope?” exclaimed Mrs Wyllys,
when his short explanation was ended, her cheek
again blanching with disappointment. “I have heard
that the gulf, which foundering vessels leave, swallows
all lesser objects that are floating nigh!”

“It sometimes happens. For worlds I would not
deceive you; and I now say that I think our chance
for escape equal to that of being ingulfed with the
vessel.”

“This is terrible!” murmured the governess,
“but the will of Heaven be done! Cannot ingenuity
supply the place of strength, and the boat be cast
from the decks before the fatal moment arrives?”

Wilder shook his head in an unequivocal negative.

“We are not so weak as you may think us,” said
Gertrude. “Give a direction to our efforts, and let
us see what may yet be done. Here is Cassandra,”
she added—turning to the black girl already introduced
to the reader, who stood behind her young
and ardent mistress, with the mantle and shawls of
the latter thrown over her arm, as if about to attend
her on an excursion for the morning—“here is Cassandra,
who alone has nearly the strength of a man.”

“Had she the strength of twenty, I should despair
of launching the boat without the aid of machinery.
But we lose time in words; I will go below, in order

to judge of the probable duration of our doubt;
and then to our preparations. Even you, fair and
fragile as you seem, lovely being, may aid in the
latter.”

He then pointed out such lighter objects as would
be necessary to their comfort, should they be so fortunate
as to get clear of the wreck, and advised their
being put into the boat without delay. While the
three females were thus usefully employed, he descended
into the hold of the ship, in order to note
the increase of the water, and make his calculations
on the time that would elapse before the sinking
fabric must entirely disappear. The fact proved their
case to be more alarming than even Wilder had been
led to expect. Stripped of her masts, the vessel had
laboured so heavily as to open many of her seams;
and, as the upper works began to settle beneath the
level of the ocean, the influx of the element was increasing
with frightful rapidity. As the young mariner
gazed about him with an understanding eye, he
cursed, in the bitterness of his heart, the ignorance
and superstition that had caused the desertion of the
remainder of the crew. There existed, in reality,
no evil that exertion and skill could not have remedied;
but, deprived of all aid, he at once saw the
folly of even attempting to procrastinate a catastrophe
that was now unavoidable. Returning with a
heavy heart to the deck, he immediately set about
those dispositions which were necessary to afford
them the smallest chance of escape.

While his companions deadened the sense of apprehension
by their light but equally necessary employment,
Wilder stepped the two masts of the boat,
and properly disposed of the sails, and those other
implements that might be useful in the event of success.
Thus occupied, a couple of hours flew by, as
though minutes were compressed into moments. At
the expiration of that period, his labour had ceased.

He then cut the gripes that had kept the launch in
its place when the ship was in motion, leaving it
standing upright on its wooden beds, but in no other
manner connected with the hull, which, by this time,
had settled so low as to create the apprehension,
that, at any moment, it might sink from beneath
them. After this measure of precaution was taken,
the females were summoned to the boat, lest the
crisis might be nearer than he supposed; for he well
knew that a foundering ship was, like a tottering
wall, liable at any moment to yield to the impulse
of the downward pressure. He then commenced
the scarcely less necessary operation of selection
among the chaos of articles with which the ill-directed
zeal of his companions had so cumbered the
boat, that there was hardly room left in which they
might dispose of their more precious persons. Notwithstanding
the often repeated and vociferous remonstrances
of the negress, boxes, trunks, and packages
flew from either side of the launch, as though
Wilder had no consideration for the comfort and care
of that fair being in whose behalf Cassandra, unheeded,
like her ancient namesake of Troy, lifted
her voice so often in the tones of remonstrance.
The boat was soon cleared of what, under their circumstances,
was literally lumber; leaving, however,
far more than enough to meet all their wants, and
not a few of their comforts, in the event that the
elements should accord the permission to use them.

Then, and not till then, did Wilder relax in his
exertions. He had arranged his sails, ready to be
hoisted in an instant; he had carefully examined that
no straggling rope connected the boat to the wreck,
to draw them under with the foundering mass; and
he had assured himself that food, water, compass,
and the imperfect instruments that were then in use
to ascertain the position of a ship, were all carefully
disposed of in their several places, and ready to

his hand. When all was in this state of preparation,
he disposed of himself in the stern of the boat, and
endeavoured, by the composure of his manner, to
inspire his less resolute companions with a portion of
his own firmness.

The bright sun-shine was sleeping in a thousand
places on every side of the silent and deserted wreck.
The sea had subsided to such a state of utter rest,
that it was only at long intervals that the huge and
helpless mass on which the ark of the expectants lay
was lifted from its dull quietude, to roll heavily, for
a moment, in the washing waters, and then to settle
lower into the greedy and absorbing element. Still
the disappearance of the hull was slow, and even
tedious, to those who looked forward with such impatience
to its total immersion, as to the crisis of
their own fortunes.

During these hours of weasy and awful suspense,
the discourse, between the watchers, though conducted
in tones of confidence, and often of tenderness,
was broken by long intervals of deep and
musing silence. Each forbore to dwell upon the
danger of their situation, in consideration of the
feelings of the rest; but neither could conceal the
imminent risk they ran, from that jealous watchfulness
of love of life which was common to them all.
In this manner, minutes, hours, and the day itself,
rolled by, and the darkness was seen stealing along
the deep, gradually narrowing the boundary of their
view towards the east, until the whole of the empty
scene was limited to a little dusky circle around the
spot on which they lay. To this change succeeded
another fearful hour, during which it appeared that
death was about to visit them, environed by its most
revolting horrors. The heavy plunge of the wallowing
whale, as he cast his huge form upon the
surface of the sea, was heard, accompanied by the
mimic blowings of a hundred imitators, that followed

in the train of the monarch of the ocean. It appeared,
to the alarmed and feverish imagination of
Gertrude, that the brine was giving up all its monsters;
and, notwithstanding the calm assurances of
Wilder, that these accustomed sounds were rather
the harbingers of peace than signs of any new danger,
they filled her mind with images of the secret
recesses over which they seemed suspended by a
thread, and painted them replete with the disgusting
inhabitants of the caverns of the great deep. The
intelligent seaman himself was startled, when he
saw, on the surface of the water, the dark fins of the
voracious shark stealing around the wreck, apprised,
by his instinct, that the contents of the devoted vessel
were shortly to become the prey of his tribe.
Then came the moon; with its mild and deceptive
light, to throw the delusion of its glow on the varying
but ever frightful scene.

“See,” said Wilder, as the luminary lifted its pale
and melancholy orb out of the bed of the ocean;
“we shall have light for our hazardous launch!”

“Is it at hand?” demanded Mrs Wyllys, with all
the resolution of manner she could assume in so trying
a situation.

“It is—the ship has already brought her scuppers
to the water. Sometimes a vessel will float until
saturated with the brine. If ours sink at all, it will
be soon.”

“If at all! Is there then hope that she can float?”

“None!” said Wilder, pausing to listen to the
hollow and threatening sounds which issued from the
depths of the vessel, as the water broke through her
divisions, in passing from side to side, and which
sounded like the groaning of some heavy monster in
the last agony of nature. “None; she is already
losing her level!”

His companions saw the change; but, not for the
empire of the world, could either of them have uttered

a syllable. Another low, threatening, rumbling
sound was heard, and then the pent air beneath blew
up the forward part of the deck, with an explosion
like that of a gun.

“Now grasp the ropes I have given you!” cried
Wilder, breathless with his eagerness to speak.

His words were smothered by the rushing and
gurgling of waters. The vessel made a plunge like
a dying whale; and, raising its stern high into the
air, glided into the depths of the sea, like the leviathan
seeking his secret places. The motionless
boat was lifted with the ship, until it stood in an attitude
fearfully approaching to the perpendicular.
As the wreck descended, the bows of the launch
met the element, burying themselves nearly to filling;
but, buoyant and light, it rose again, and, struck
powerfully on the stern by the settling mass, the little
ark shot ahead, as thog it had been driven by
the hand of man. Still, as the water rushed into the
vortex, every thing within its influence yielded to
the suction; and, at the next instant, the launch was
seen darting down the declivity, as if eager to follow
the vast machine, of which it had so long formed
a dependant, through the same gaping whirlpool,
to the bottom. Then it rose, rocking, to the surface;
and, for a moment, was tossed and whirled
like a bubble circling in the eddies of a pool. After
which, the ocean moaned, and slept again; the
moon-beams playing across its treacherous bosom,
sweetly and calm, as the rays are seen to quiver on
a lake that is embedded in sheltering mountains.