re and more imminent.

The crowd broke into groups. Pale, stern men, with rigid features, who
had been employed aiding in the construction of the rafts, returned now
to the sides of their wives and children.

Through a vista on the deck I discerned Miss Lamarque, sitting quietly
with her youngest nursling in her arms, beside her brother. His children
and slaves were gathered around her knees. Dunmore was giving her my
message, I could not doubt, from the glances she cast in my direction,
as he stood near by. I knew that he would soon turn to come again, but
my resolution was fixed.

Captain Ambrose, with a face grown old in half a day, gray, abstracted,
wretched, passed and repassed me several times, telescope in hand.

Ralph Maxwell on the round-house kept constant watch, his attitude
dauntless, his face uplifted and keen, field-glass in hand. His
West-Point training stood him in good stead now. Captain Falconer, a
naval officer, had returned to the side of Miss Oscanyan, the woman he
had loved hopelessly for years, and, before the scene closed between us
forever, I saw him clasp her to his bosom; so that trying hour had for
some high spirits its crowning consolations, its solace and reward, and,
whatever else was in store, the martyrdom of love was over.

An eager hand caught my shawl. "He is coming back, coming to persuade
you to leave us," said the young girl; "but you have promised not to
part from us, and I feel that God will remember us if we remain together
firm and fast, we three."

Then the pale widow spoke in turn: "Let me stay beside you too," she
entreated; "it makes me feel stronger, I am so desolate--" and she bowed
her head and wept.

I would have said in the strange, calm bitterness that possessed my
soul: "What value has life to you and your deformed one? Poor, widowed,
sickly, and despised, why should you wish to live? Why encumber me?"

But thoughts like these were not for human utterance now, and we sat
together, hand locked in hand for a time, waiting for the end, as men
may wait in years to come, when the earth is gray with sin, for the
coming of the fiery comet that they know is destined to consume them.

For was not this ship our world, penned in as we were on every side, and
separated from all else by an ocean inexorable and illimitable as space,
and were not we likewise looking forward to a fiery doom--our finite,
perhaps final, day of judgment?

I could understand then, for the fir