fall heavily; while a thick fog rising,
shut out the shore and every object from view. Then, as Captain Dinks
and Mr Meldrum were deliberating whether it would be better under the
circumstances to run the ship straight for the beach--which they had
calculated to be some five miles in front of them to the south-east or
the cape they had just passed--or else to continue pumping until the
weather got lighter and they could see better where they were going, the
matter was settled for them, in a very unexpected manner, by the ship
running on to a sunken ridge of rock immediately under her forefoot;
and, in a moment, there she stuck hard and fast, bumping and scraping
her bottom, with a harsh, grating sound and a quivering and rending of
her timbers, as if every plank below the water-line was being torn out
of her piecemeal.

The _Nancy Bell_ had struck on some barrier reef, which guarded at a
distance the desolate and inhospitable shore, just at the very moment
everything was deemed secure and all danger past! And, as she stranded,
the thick-falling white snow which had already covered the decks seemed
to be busy wreathing a shroud for the ill-fated ship, while the surges
sang her requiem in their dull, heart-breaking roar--the sea-fog hanging
over the scene of the calamity the while like a sombre pall.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A FOUL BLOW!

Every one was on deck at the time--the crew, the officers, the
passengers; but, with the exception of a slight scream from Mrs Major
Negus, which passed unnoticed, not a single exclamation of terror or
alarm was uttered. All seemed completely stupefied by the unexpected
shock, their consternation being too great for words--they stood as if
spell-bound!

Captain Dinks was the first to break the silence.

"God forgive me!" he cried out to everybody's surprise. "It is all my
fault!"

"Your fault!" repeated Mr Meldrum; "how--why?"

"I should have had a man forward, sounding with the lead, but I quite
forgot it--quite forgot it; and this has happened."

"Nonsense, man!" said the other to cheer him up--the captain appearing
to be more concerned at his own neglect, as he regarded it, than he was
at the actual fact of the ship's striking on the reef--"such a
precaution would have been utterly useless! We were probably in deep
water a minute before; and even if a man had been stationed in the
chains, he could scarcely have had time to have swung the lead and sang
out the marks, b