hour so particularly
lonely and dejected upon the broad ocean, and perhaps a thousand miles
away from the nearest point of land.

At this dread and lonely hour, when no sound reaches the ear and
disturbs the wrapt stillness of the night, save the whistling of the
wind through the cordage, or an occasional dash of water against the
vessel's side, the thoughts of the sailor are fixed on far distant
objects--his own native land and the friends and loved ones he has left
behind him.

He then thinks of the wilderness before, behind, and around him; of the
immense body of water, almost in places bottomless; gazing upon such a
scene, and with thoughts as strange and indefinite as the very
boundless expanse before him, it is no wonder if he should become
superstitious; the time and place would, indeed unbidden, conjure up
thoughts and feelings of a fearful character and intensity.

The stranger at such times would occupy his favourite seat on the water
cask, and looking up at the sky and then on the ocean, and between
whiles he would whistle a strange, wild, unknown melody.

The flesh of the sailors used to creep up in knots and bumps when they
heard it; the wind used to whistle as an accompaniment and pronounce
fearful sounds to their ears.

The wind had been highly favourable from the first, and since the
stranger had been discovered it had blown fresh, and we went along at a
rapid rate, stemming the water, and dashing the spray off from the bows,
and cutting the water like a shark.

This was very singular to us, we couldn't understand it, neither could
the captain, and we looked very suspiciously at the stranger, and wished
him at the bottom, for the freshness of the wind now became a gale, and
yet the ship came through the water steadily, and away we went before
the wind, as if the devil drove us; and mind I don't mean to say he
didn't.

The gale increased to a hurricane, and though we had not a stitch of
canvass out, yet we drove before the gale as if we had been shot out of
the mouth of a gun.

The stranger still sat on the water casks, and all night long he kept up
his infernal whistle. Now, sailors don't like to hear any one whistle
when there's such a gale blowing over their heads--it's like asking for
more; but he would persist, and the louder and stronger the wind blew,
the louder he whistled.

At length there came a storm of rain, lightning, and wind. We were
tossed mountains high, and the foam rose ove