ich was still
running. We made a determined effort to put back, but our little boat
was like a feather in the breath of the tempest. We saw at a glance that
the doom of the unfortunate artist was sealed.

As our distance from the wreck rapidly increased, the madman (for as
such only could we regard him) was seen to emerge from the
companion-way, up which, by dint of a strength that appeared gigantic,
he dragged, bodily, the oblong box. While we gazed in the extremity of
astonishment, he passed, rapidly, several turns of a three-inch rope,
first around the box and then around his body. In another instant both
body and box ware in the sea--disappearing suddenly, at once and
forever.

We lingered awhile sadly upon our oars, with our eyes riveted upon the
spot. At length we pulled away. The silence remained unbroken for an
hour. Finally, I hazarded a remark.

"Did you observe, Captain, how suddenly they sank? Was not that an
exceedingly singular thing? I confess that I entertained some feeble
hope of his final deliverance, when I saw him lash himself to the box,
and commit himself to the sea."

"They sank as a matter of course," replied the Captain, "and that like a
shot. They will soon rise again, however--_but not till the salt
melts_."

"The salt!" I ejaculated.

"Hush!" said the Captain, pointing to the wife and sisters of the
deceased. "We must talk of these things at some more appropriate time."

* * * * *

We suffered much, and made a narrow escape; but fortune befriended _us_,
as well as our mates in the long boat. We landed, in fine, more dead
than alive, after four days of intense distress, upon the beach opposite
Roanoke Island. We remained there a week, were not ill-treated by the
wreckers, and at length obtained a passage to New York.

About a month after the loss of the Independence, I happened to meet
Captain Hardy in Broadway. Our conversation turned, naturally, upon the
disaster, and especially upon the sad fate of poor Wyatt. I thus learned
the following particulars.

The artist had engaged passage for himself, wife, two sisters, and a
servant. His wife was, indeed, as she had been represented, a most
lovely and most accomplished woman. On the morning of the fourteenth of
June (the day in which I first visited the ship), the lady suddenly
sickened and died. The young husband was frantic with grief--but
circumstances imperatively forbade the deferring his voyage t