deed, the whole of this latter noise were
not rather produced by my own imagination. I say it seemed to resemble
sobbing or sighing, but, of course, it could not have been either. I
rather think it was a ringing in my own ears. Mr. Wyatt, no doubt,
according to custom, was merely giving the rein to one of his hobbies,
indulging in one of his fits of artistic enthusiasm. He had opened his
oblong box in order to feast his eyes on the pictorial treasure within.
There was nothing in this, however, to make him sob. I repeat,
therefore, that it must have been simply a freak of my own fancy,
distempered by good Captain Hardy's green tea. Just before dawn, on each
of the two nights of which I speak, I distinctly heard Mr. Wyatt replace
the lid upon the oblong box, and force the nails into their old places
by means of the muffled mallet. Having done this, he issued from his
stateroom, fully dressed, and proceeded to call Mrs. W. from hers.

We had been at sea seven days, and were now off Cape Hatteras, when
there came a tremendously heavy blow from the southwest. We were, in a
measure, prepared for it, however, as the weather had been holding out
threats for some time. Everything was made snug, alow and aloft; and, as
the wind steadily freshened, we lay to, at length, under spanker and
foretopsail, both double-reefed.

In this trim we rode safely enough for forty-eight hours, the ship
proving herself an excellent sea-boat in many respects, and shipping no
water of any consequence. At the end of this period, however, the gale
had freshened into a hurricane, and our after-sail split into ribbons,
bringing us so much in the trough of the water that we shipped several
prodigious seas, one immediately after the other. By this accident we
lost three men overboard with the caboose, and nearly the whole of the
larboard bulwarks. Scarcely had we recovered our senses before the
foretopsail went into shreds, when we got up a storm staysail, and with
this did pretty well for some hours, the ship heading the sea much more
steadily than before.

The gale still held on, however, and we saw no signs of its abating. The
rigging was found to be ill-fitted and greatly strained; and on the
third day of the blow, about five in the afternoon, our mizzen-mast, in
a heavy lurch to windward, went by the board. For an hour or more we
tried in vain to get rid of it, on account of the prodigious rolling of
the ship; and, before we had succeeded, the carp