minutes had been lost in the
smoky canopy, that might never be regained. The sea changed its colour
from a dark green to a glittering white; and then the fury of the gust was
heard rushing along the water with fearful rapidity, and with a violence
that could not he resisted.

"Be lively, men!" shouted Bignall himself, in the exigency in which his
vessel was placed; "Roll up the cloth; in with it all--leave not a rag to
the squall! 'Fore George, Mr Wilder, but this wind is not playing with us;
cheer up the men to their work; speak to them cheerily, sir!"

"Furl away!" shouted Wilder. "Cut, if too late, work away with knives and
teeth--down, every man of you, down--down for your lives, all!"

There was that in the voice of the lieutenant which sounded in the ears of
his people like a supernatural cry. He had so recently witnessed a
calamity similar to that which again threatened him, that perhaps his
feelings lent a secret horror to the tones. A score of forms was seen
descending swiftly, through an atmosphere that appeared sensible to the
touch. Nor was their escape, which might be likened to the stooping of
birds that dart into their nest, too earnestly pressed. Stripped of all
its rigging, and already tottering under numerous wounds, the lofty and
overloaded spars yielded to the mighty force of the squall, tumbling in
succession towards the hull, until nothing stood but the three firmer, but
shorn and nearly useless, lower masts. By far the greater number of those
aloft reached the deck in time to insure their safety, though some there
were too stubborn, and still too much under the sullen influence of the
combat, to hearken to the words of warning. These victims of their own
obstinacy were seen clinging to the broken fragments of the spars, as the
"Dart," in a cloud of foam, drove away from the spot where they floated,
until their persons and their misery were alike swallowed in the distance.

"It is the hand of God!" hoarsely exclaimed the veteran Bignall, while his
contracting eye drunk in the destruction of the wreck. "Mark me, Henry
Ark; I will forever testify that the guns of the pirate have not brought
us to this condition."

Little disposed to seek the same miserable consolation as his Commander,
Wilder exerted himself in counteracting, so far as circumstances would
allow, an injury that he felt, however, at that moment to be irreparable.
Amid the howling of the gust, and the fearful crashing of the thunder