tter did not seem to feel the immense weight of the canvass, increased
as it was by the rain; but danced about as buoyantly as ever. In a few
minutes vanished all idea of sending the mainsail adrift, and every
thought was turned to the trysail. Five times the attempt was made to
set it; but the furious blasts of wind, now freighted with hail,
dissipated the strength of our crew with the same facility as the breath
of a man would level a palace of cards. During these repeated efforts to
get the trysail up, which necessarily occupied much time, the cutter had
drifted some way to leeward; and, at last, the man keeping watch on the
bow, exclaimed,

"Breakers! Sir, breakers!"

A dozen of us vociferated at the same moment,

"Where?"

"There they are!" shouted the man; "close on the lee-beam!"

Through the thickness of night the waves were discernible like a heap of
snow, white with foam, and, as if wantoning with each other, jumping
into the air, not fifty fathoms from the yacht. Sailors are brave men;
but when a continuity of danger pursues them, they are apt to despair,
not from any want of physical or moral ability, but from that morbid
impotence which develops itself in their superstitious fancies. The
pilots had not given up the hope of vanquishing the storm, and D----,
who knew the disposition of his countrymen, did not yet dread their
vacillation; but we did. Nothing seemed possible to save us, but the
interposition of Heaven; for the storm-jib and reefed foresail were the
only sails on the cutter, and they were barely sufficient, in such a
sea, to give her steerage way. Every wave that struck the yacht hurled
her near and nearer to the breakers; but the courage of the men
continued indomitable, and promptly, with the most cheerful expressions,
they performed any, the most perilous task allotted to them.

"Ware her, pilot!" D---- called out to the principal pilot. The two
pilots taking up the hint, consulted for an instant, and then that one
to whom D---- had spoken, said,

"Ware ship."

The beautiful little vessel obeyed her helm as willingly as if she were
on a lake; and D---- could not help observing to me, his eyes beaming
with the devotion of a sailor for his ship,

"It's a shame, Sir, to doubt she would ever perform her duty."

Scarcely had the words fallen from his lips, or the cutter wore round,
when the man, who had first seen the breakers, shouted a second time,
like the flying herald of Doomsday,