at up all night over their kitchen fire.

By ten o'clock of the next day their fears had grown too troublesome to
allow further inaction. Clump pulled over in his punt to the village,
across the bay. There he got some sailors to take a boat and go down
the south coast to look for us, and gathering all the advice and
surmises he could, (which were not consoling), from seafaring men he
knew, returned to the cape.

When Juno heard Clump's report, her distress was very great. As she
groaned, and wiped her wet, shrivelled eyes with a duster, she said--

"Lor' o' Marsy! Clump, ef harm's cum ter dem chiles ob Massa
Tregellin--den--den--you berry me--berry dis ole 'ooman deep."

"Now, toff your mout, June--toff your mout! Wen I'se done berry you, ou
yer 'spects gwine 'posit Clump en de bowels ob de arth, ay? He jist
stay here and _tink_."--He did not mean _think_, but another word
commencing with that unpronounceable _s_--"You'se fool, ole 'ooman; when
you'se begin mittrut de Lor', ay?"

Clump was so frightened himself that he had to talk pretty strong to his
spouse.

Mr Clare, after morning service in the church at Q---town, where he had
gone to hear a college friend preach, took advantage of the lovely
autumn day to walk home, which was about ten miles. He made his way
slowly, enjoying every foot of the road, little contemplating the shock
he was to receive at his journey's end.

He heard Clump and Juno's report without a word, only growing paler and
paler. Then he sat down and covered his face, and, after a moment of
silence, asked the negroes certain questions as to the course they
supposed us to have taken, as to the storm on the cape, etcetera,
etcetera.

He started off after that on a hard run for Bath Bay, where he jumped
into a boat, and, pulling out into the greater bay, rowed with all his
strength over to the village; but his inquiries there could gain no
information, so he hired a small schooner-rigged boat and its owner to
go out with him and hunt us up, or find some trace of our fate.

Mr Clare could not be still whilst the boatman, who had to go up to his
home first, was getting ready, but ordered him to make all haste and
call for him off the cape, and then he jumped into his own boat again
and recrossed to the cape. But the boatman took a long time in coming,
Mr Clare walking up and down the cape in the meanwhile, a prey to the
gloomiest apprehensions. It was nearly five o'clock before Mr Cl