vary a little from its
course. The words were still on his lips, when the same black object came
sweeping down the wave to windward, and a pinnace, bottom upwards, washed
past them in the trough. Then followed a shriek from the negress, who
abandoned the tiller, and, sinking on her knees, hid her face in her
hands. Wilder instinctively caught the helm, as he bent his face in the
direction whence the revolting eye of Cassandra had been turned. A grim
human form was seen, erect, and half exposed, advancing in the midst of
the broken crest which was still covering the dark declivity to windward
with foam. For a moment, it stood with the brine dripping from the
drenched locks, like some being that had issued from the deep to turn its
frightful features on the spectators; and then the lifeless body of a
drowned man drove past the launch, which, at the next minute, rose to the
summit of the wave, to sink into another vale where no such terrifying
object floated.

Not only Wilder, but Gertrude and Mrs Wyllys. had seen this startling
spectacle so nigh them as to recognize the countenance of Nighthead,
rendered still more stern and forbidding than ever, in the impression left
by death. But neither spoke, nor gave any other evidence of their
intelligence. Wilder hoped that his companions had at least escaped the
shock of recognizing the victim; and the females themselves saw, in the
hapless fortune of the mutineer too much of their own probable though more
protracted fate, to be able to give vent to the horror each felt so
deeply, in words. For some time, the elements alone were heard sighing a
sort of hoarse requiem over the victims of their conflict.

"The pinnace has filled!" Wilder at length observed, when he saw, by the
pallid features and meaning eyes of his companions, it was in vain to
affect reserve on the subject any longer. "Their boat was frail, and
loaded to the water's edge."

"Think you all are lost?" observed Mrs Wyllys, in a voice that scarcely
amounted to a whisper.

"There is no hope for any! Gladly would I part with an arm, for the
assistance of the poorest of those misguided seamen, who have hurried on
their evil fortune by their own disobedience and ignorance."

"And, of all the happy and thoughtless human beings who lately left the
harbour of Newport, in a vessel that has so long been the boast of
mariners, we alone remain!"

"There is not another: This boat, and its contents are the sole memorials
o