g them on board. Amongst them the most conspicuous was Mr.
Dulberry: with his cloak tucked about his middle, "succinct for speed,"
he spun along with fury in his eyes--howling out, at every moment,
"Stop, ye cursed Aristocrats! All men are equal. Stop for your
pedestrian brothers; ye vile Aristocratic hounds!"--but all in vain:
the sailors had shouting enough of their own to mind. From the hearse,
which acted as commodore to the whole squadron, a running fire of
signals and nautical instructions was kept up fore and aft: "Now
bowson! now Fisherman! what are you after?--keep 'em up, keep 'em up.
Look at that great lumbering devil."--"What _that_?"--"No, that on the
starboard: by G---, he runs like a cow. Who's got a stone? Here, hand
it us; and I'll send him a remembrance. Messmates astern,--keep a sharp
look out; there's breakers a-head. Now, bowson, come--what are you up
to? Give that off leader of yours a kick for me. Look at him: He never
was out of a plough field; and he thinks he's ploughing for the devil.
Have you ever a bullet, bowson? Drop it into his ear, and he'll gallop
like a pig in a storm.--Fisherman, you throw your lash as if you were
trout-fishing: here, give us your whip, and I'll start him--an old
black devil! Now, bowson, mind how you double Cape Horn!"

In the next moment Cape Horn was doubled: one after one the flying
squadron of hearse and chaises, which still continued to scud along
like clouds before the wind, whirled round a point of rock and vanished
like a hurricane: in a few minutes the flying pedestrians had followed
them: the hubbub of shouts, halloos, curses, and travelling echoes,
were hushed abruptly as in the silence of the grave: the wild spectacle
of black draperies and fierce faces had fled like an exhalation or a
delirium: all were locked up from the eye and the ear by the lofty
barriers of another valley, and Bertram, who had lingered behind--and
now found himself left alone in a solitary valley with a silence as
profound under the broad light of three o'clock in the afternoon as
elsewhere at midnight,--felt so much perplexed by this abrupt
transition and the tumultuous succession of incidents, that for some
time he was almost disposed to doubt whether Captain le Harnois, and
the funeral of Captain le Harnois, and every thing that related to
Captain le Harnois were not some aerial pageant bred out of those
melancholy vapors which are often attributed to the solemn impressions
of mo