does not
seem to ruffle the surface."

"No wind, I think," said Van Graoul; "but better shorten sail; the
canvas does no good."

Such also was Fairburn's opinion, and accordingly the schooner was made
snug to meet the hurricane should it arrive.

The crew were clustering in groups on deck watching the strange
appearance, and in suppressed voices asking each other what it could
mean. The more nervous already began to give way to fear; and the
bravest were not altogether free from apprehension that some awful
catastrophe was about to occur. The Javanese declared that it portended
great convulsions in their country, and perhaps the overthrow of the
ruling powers. Some of the more credulous of the seamen began to
connect it, in some way or other, with the sudden disappearance of the
strange brig.

"I knowed it would be so," muttered Dick Harper. "I never yet heard of
any one coming across those fly-away, never-find-me sort of chaps we met
t'other day, but what was sure to get into mischief afore long."

These, and similar observations, according to the temper and the natural
prejudices of the speakers, by degrees spread an undefined apprehension
of evil among all the crew; and fellows who, I believe, would have faced
any known danger, and struggled manfully with death to the last, were
now full of fear, and ready to be startled at the sound of a gun, or
even the flap of a sail. On came the dark mass, as it approached
assuming a dusky red appearance, which much increased its terrors. In a
short time it covered the whole sky, and a darkness deeper than night
came on. There was only one clear space, just like a gleam of light,
seen at the end of a cavern, and that was away to the eastward, whence
the light wind then blowing came; and even that was growing narrower and
narrower. The darkness increased; the hearts of all of us, I believe,
sunk; the light in the east, our last ray of hope, which till now had
tended somewhat to cheer our spirits, totally disappeared, and we all
began to feel that death, in some horrible, undefined shape, might
speedily be our lot. It was dark before, as dark as night, but still we
might have made out a vessel at the distance of a quarter of a mile; now
we could scarcely see the length of the schooner. We were, when the
darkness began, to the best of our knowledge, some distance from any
land, or reefs, or shoals, and we trusted that no current might be
carrying us towards any dang