d to read their import, with an intelligence
correspondent to the degree of skill he might have acquired, during his
particular period of service on that treacherous element which was now
his home.

The dim tracery of the stranger's form had been swallowed by the flood of
misty light, which, by this time, rolled along the sea like drifting
vapour, semi-pellucid, preternatural, and seemingly tangible. The ocean
itself appeared admonished that a quick and violent change was nigh. The
waves ceased to break in their former foaming and brilliant crests, and
black masses of the water lifted their surly summits against the eastern
horizon, no longer shedding their own peculiar and lucid atmosphere
around them. The breeze which had been so fresh, and which had even
blown with a force that nearly amounted to a gale, was lulling and
becoming uncertain, as it might be awed by the more violent power that
was gathering along the borders of the sea, in the direction of the
neighbouring continent. Each moment, the eastern puffs of air lost their
strength, becoming more and more feeble, until, in an incredibly short
period, the heavy sails were heard flapping against the masts. A
frightful and ominous calm succeeded. At this instant, a gleam flashed
from the fearful obscurity of the ocean, and a roar, like that of a
sudden burst of thunder, bellowed along the waters. The seamen turned
their startled looks on each other, standing aghast, as if a warning of
what was to follow had come out of the heavens themselves. But their
calm and more sagacious commander put a different construction on the
signal. His lip curled, in high professional pride, and he muttered with
scorn,--

"Does he imagine that we sleep? Ay, he has got it himself, and would
open our eyes to what is coming? What does he conjecture we have been
about, since the middle watch was set?"

Wilder made a swift turn or two on the quarter-deck, turning his quick
glances from one quarter of the heavens to another; from the black and
lulling water on which his vessel was rolling, to the sails; and from his
silent and profoundly expectant crew, to the dim lines of spars that were
waving above his head, like so many pencils tracing their curvilinear and
wanton images over the murky volumes of the superincumbent clouds.

"Lay the after-yards square!" he said, in a voice which was heard by
every man on deck, though his words were apparently spoken but little
above his b