ay be able to set these sails."

All hands worked with desperate energy, and it required all their
strength to prevent the canvas from being blown out of their hands. The
savage wind upon her bare hull and spars had given the brig
steerage-way, and when the man at the helm threw the wheel over, the
head of the vessel began to come up to the wind. Captain 'Siah was
hopeful, and he encouraged the men at the spanker to renewed exertions.
He saw that the mate had partially succeeded in setting the head sail,
and the chances were certainly much better than they had been a moment
before. Perhaps, if no greater calamity than that which came on the
wings of the stormy wind had befallen the brig and her crew, she might
possibly have been saved.

The shower from the south-west and that from the east, had apparently
come together above the devoted vessel. The lightning was more frequent
and vivid, the thunder followed each flash almost instantaneously; and
Captain 'Siah realized that the clouds were but a short distance above
the brig. But he heeded not the booming thunder or the glaring
lightning, only as the latter enabled him to see the work upon which the
mate and himself were engaged. The captain, aided by the passenger, was
lashing the throat of the gaff down to its place, when a heavy bolt of
lightning, accompanied at the same instant by a terrific peel of
thunder, struck the main-royal mast-head, and leaped down the mast in a
lurid current of fire. At the throat of the main-boom it was divided,
part of it following the mast down into the cabin and hold, and the rest
darting off on the spar, where the captain, the passenger, and three men
were at work on the spanker. Every one of them was struck down, and lay
senseless on the deck. Even the man at the wheel shared their fate,
though no one could know who were killed and who were simply stunned by
the shock. The lightning capriciously leaped from the boom to the metal
work of the wheel, shattering the whole into a thousand pieces, and
splintering the rudder-head as though it had been so much glass.

The rudder was disabled, the fore-topmast staysail was rent into
ribbons, and the brig fell off into the trough of the sea, where she
rolled helplessly at the mercy of the tempest.

CHAPTER II.

THE LAST OF THE WALDO.

The storm which swept over the waters of the lower bay, lashing them
into a wild fury, and piling up the angry waves upon them, was not
merely a squ