with such noise, that he believed the mast had gone by the board; and
starting upright in his bed, asked, with all the symptoms of horror,
what was the cause of that disturbance? The boy, half-stunned by his
fall, answered in a dolorous tone, "I'm come to put up the dead-lights."
At the mention of dead-lights, the meaning of which he did not
understand, the poor governor's heart died within him: he shivered with
despair, his recollection forsaking him, he fell upon his knees in the
bed, and, fixing his eyes upon the book which was in his hand, began to
pronounce aloud with great fervour, "The time of a complete oscillation
in the cycloid, is to the time in which a body would fall through
the axis of the cycloid DV, as the circumference of a circle to its
diameter."

He would in all likelihood have proceeded with the demonstration of this
proposition, had he not been seized with such a qualm as compelled
him to drop the book, and accommodate himself to the emergency of his
distemper: he therefore stretched himself at full length, and, putting
up ejaculations to Heaven, began to prepare himself for his latter end,
when all of a sudden the noise above was intermitted; and as he could
not conceive the cause of this tremendous silence, he imagined that
either the men were washed overboard, or that, despairing of safety,
they had ceased to oppose the tempest. While he was harrowed by this
miserable uncertainty, which, however, was not altogether unenlightened
by some scattered rays of hope, the master entered the cabin: then he
asked, with a voice half-extinguished by fear, how matters went upon
deck; and the skipper, with a large bottle of brandy applied to his
mouth, answered, in a hollow tone, "All's over now, master." Upon which,
Mr. Jolter, giving himself over for lost, exclaimed, with the utmost
horror, "Lord have mercy upon us! Christ have mercy upon us;" and
repeated this supplication, as it were mechanically, until the master
undeceived him by explaining the meaning of what he had said, and
assuring him that the squall was over.

Such a sudden transition from fear to joy occasioned a violent agitation
both in his mind and body; and it was a full quarter of an hour, before
he recovered the right use of his organs, By this time the weather
cleared up, the wind began to blow again from the right corner, and the
spires of Calais appeared at the distance of five leagues; so that the
countenances of all on board were li