?" Answer there was none. But suddenly the man at the mast-head,
whose countenance darkened with alarm, cried out--"Sail on the weather
beam! Down she comes upon us: in seventy seconds she will founder!"

2.

I looked to the weather side, and the summer had departed. The sea was
rocking, and shaken with gathering wrath. Upon its surface sate mighty
mists, which grouped themselves into arches and long cathedral aisles. Down
one of these, with the fiery pace of a quarrel from a cross-bow, ran a
frigate right athwart our course. "Are they mad?" some voice exclaimed from
our deck. "Are they blind? Do they woo their ruin?" But in a moment, as she
was close upon us, some impulse of a heady current or sudden vortex gave a
wheeling bias to her course, and off she forged without a shock. As she ran
past us, high aloft amongst the shrouds stood the lady of the pinnace. The
deeps opened ahead in malice to receive her, towering surges of foam ran
after her, the billows were fierce to catch her. But far away she was borne
into desert spaces of the sea: whilst still by sight I followed her, as she
ran before the howling gale, chased by angry sea-birds and by maddening
billows; still I saw her, as at the moment when she ran past us, amongst
the shrouds, with her white draperies streaming before the wind. There
she stood with hair dishevelled, one hand clutched amongst the
tackling--rising, sinking, fluttering, trembling, praying--there for
leagues I saw her as she stood, raising at intervals one hand to heaven,
amidst the fiery crests of the pursuing waves and the raving of the storm;
until at last, upon a sound from afar of malicious laughter and mockery,
all was hidden for ever in driving showers; and afterwards, but when I know
not, and how I know not.

3.

Sweet funeral bells from some incalculable distance, wailing over the dead
that die before the dawn, awakened me as I slept in a boat moored to some
familiar shore. The morning twilight even then was breaking; and, by the
dusky revelations which it spread, I saw a girl adorned with a garland
of white roses about her head for some great festival, running along the
solitary strand with extremity of haste. Her running was the running of
panic; and often she looked back as to some dreadful enemy in the rear. But
when I leaped ashore, and followed on her steps to warn her of a peril in
front, alas! from me she fled as from another peril; and vainly I shouted
to her of quicksan