crew of the _Catamaran_
upon the distant verge of the horizon, was no longer a mere streak of
shadowed water. It had developed during the continuance of the chase,
and now covered both sea and sky,--the latter with black cumbrous
clouds, the former with quick curling waves, that lashed the water-casks
supporting both rafts, and proclaimed the approach, if not of a storm,
at least a fresh breeze,--likely to change the character of the chase
hitherto kept up between them.

And very quickly came that change to pass. By the time that the
castaways on the great raft had once more headed their clumsy
embarkation to the pursuit, they saw the more trim craft,--by her
builders yclept the _Catamaran_--with her sails spread widely to the
wind, gliding rapidly out of their reach, and "walking the water like a
thing of life."

They no longer continued the pursuit. They might have done so, but for
the waves that now, swelling up around the raft, admonished them of a
danger hitherto unknown. With the spray rushing over them, and the sea,
at each fresh assault, threatening to engulf their ill-governed craft,
they found sufficient employment for their remaining strength, in
clinging to the timbers of their rude embarkation.

CHAPTER EIGHTY EIGHT.

A THREATENED STORM.

Thus, once more, were the Catamarans delivered from a terrible danger,--
almost literally "from the jaws of death"; and once more, too, by what
appeared a providential interference.

Ben Brace actually believed it so. It would have been difficult for
anyone to have thought otherwise; but the moral mind of the sailor had
of late undergone some very serious transformations; and the perils
through which they had been passing,--with their repeated deliverances,
all apparently due to some unseen hand,--had imbued him with a belief
that the Almighty must be everywhere,--even in the midst of the
illimitable ocean.

It was this faith that had sustained him through the many trials through
which they had gone; and that, in the very latest and last,--when the
ruffians upon the raft were fast closing upon the _Catamaran_,--had led
him to give encouraging counsels to Snowball to keep on. It had
encouraged him, in fine, to strike the boat-hook from the grasp of Le
Gros,--which act had ended by putting their implacable enemy _hors du
combat_, and conducting to their final deliverance.

It was this belief that still hindered the brave mariner,--now that the
sea began