that
purpose. The boat was then dropped a sufficient distance to leeward of the
spars, where it rode head to sea, like a duck. This was a fortunate
expedient; as it came on to blow hard, and we had something very like a
little gale of wind.

As soon as the launch was thus moored, we found its advantage. It shipped
no more water, or very little, and we were not compelled to be on the
look-out for squalls, which occurred every ten or fifteen minutes, with a
violence that it would not do to trifle with. The weather thickened at
these moments; and there were intervals of half an hour at a time, when we
could not see a hundred yards from the boat, on account of the drizzling,
misty rain that filled the atmosphere. There we sat, conversing sometimes
of the past, sometimes of the future, a bubble in the midst of the raging
waters of the Atlantic, filled with the confidence of seamen. With the
stout boat we possessed, the food and water we had, I do not think either
now felt any great concern for his fate; it being possible, in moderate
weather, to run the launch far enough to reach an English port in about a
week. Favoured by even a tolerably fair wind, the object might be effected
in even two or three days.

"I take it for granted, Miles," Marble remarked, as we pursued our
discourse, "that your insurance will completely cover your whole loss? You
did not forget to include freight in the risks?"

"So far from this, Moses, I believe myself to be nearly or quite a ruined
man. The loss of the ship is unquestionably owing to the act of the
Speedy, united to our own, in setting those Englishmen adrift on the
ocean. No insurers will meet a policy that has thus been voided."

"Ah! the blackguards!--This is worse than I had thought;--but you can
always make a harbour at Clawbonny?"

I was on the point of explaining to Marble how I stood in relation to the
paternal acres, when a sort of shadow was suddenly cast on the boat, and I
fancied the rushing of the water seemed to be increased at the same
instant. We all three sat with our faces to leeward, and all turned them
to windward under a common impulse. A shout burst from Marble's throat,
and a sight met my eyes, that caused the blood to rush in a torrent
through my heart. Literally within a hundred feet of us, was a large ship,
ploughing the ocean with a furrow that rose to her hawse-holes, and piling
before her, in her track, a mound of foam, as she came down upon us, with
top