m that could
easily be put right by the administration of a dose of medicine, could
the fellow but be induced to take it. No doubt, too, the fact of our
being becalmed, and therefore to a great extent helpless, in a spot
notoriously haunted by a people, every mother's son of whom was but too
ready to participate in any act of piracy that seemed to offer a
reasonable prospect of success, had a large influence in producing the
presentiment of death in the mate's mind; but that, I felt sure, would
pass away with the impenetrable and oppressive darkness by which we were
enveloped, or with the advent of a breeze of wind. While, therefore, I
sincerely pitied the poor fellow for his disagreeable state of mind, I
thought that perhaps it would be wisest to treat it as a matter of no
importance, and to leave him to himself until the fit of depression
should have passed away.

On groping my way back to the chair I had previously occupied, I found
that Sir Edgar was still occupying the chair beside my own, meditatively
pulling away at a cigar, the glowing spark of which would probably have
still further increased Roberts's perturbation, had he seen it. As I
seated myself beside him the baronet made a half-jesting inquiry as to
whether our preparations had had the effect of reassuring the mate; so,
to while away the time, and for want of something more interesting to
talk about, I told him Roberts's story, and also described to him the
peculiar state of mind under which the poor fellow was labouring. Sir
Edgar fully agreed with me that the latter was simply the result of some
slight and probably temporary derangement, and was proceeding to discuss
the subject of presentiments in general, and the extreme rarity of
really well-authenticated cases of verification, when the atmosphere
became for an instant faintly luminous with the evanescent, quivering
glimmer of the silent, summer lightning. The flash trembled but for a
moment in the sky, and was gone again; but in that moment I saw that the
firmament was packed with vast masses of dense, heavy, threatening,
highly, charged electric cloud, the weird, contorted shapes of which
clearly indicated that they were being powerfully acted upon by the
mighty antagonistic forces that they carried within their bosoms, and
gave unmistakable warning that an elemental strife was impending, for
which it would be well to prepare. Beneath this louring canopy the
surface of the water shone with t