"Listen, lady, to my vows --
O, consent to be my spouse;
Constant ever I will be,
Constant . . . ."


No closing lines were uttered. All at once, with unutterable violence,
the captain and his orderly were dashed, face downwards, to the ground.



CHAPTER IV

A CONVULSION OF NATURE


Whence came it that at that very moment the horizon underwent so strange
and sudden a modification, that the eye of the most practiced mariner
could not distinguish between sea and sky?

Whence came it that the billows raged and rose to a height hitherto
unregistered in the records of science?

Whence came it that the elements united in one deafening crash;
that the earth groaned as though the whole framework of the globe
were ruptured; that the waters roared from their innermost depths;
that the air shrieked with all the fury of a cyclone?

Whence came it that a radiance, intenser than the effulgence