Wilder had spoken, to awaken the drowsy and to excite the torpid. The
instant he found each man on the alert, he resumed his orders with a
calmness that gave a direction to the powers of all, and yet with an
energy that he well knew was called for by the occasion. The enormous
sheets of duck, which had looked like so many light clouds in the murky
and threatening heavens, were soon seen fluttering wildly, as they
descended from their high places, and, in a few minutes, the ship was
reduced to the action of her more secure and heavier canvas. To effect
this object, every man in the ship exerted his powers to the utmost,
under the guidance of the steady but rapid mandates of their commander.
Then followed a short and apprehensive pause. All eyes were turned
towards the quarter where the ominous signs had been discovered; and each
individual endeavored to read their import, with an intelligence
correspondent to the degree of skill he might have acquired, during his
particular period of service on that treacherous element which was now
his home.

The dim tracery of the stranger's form had been swallowed by the flood of
misty light, which, by this time, rolled along the sea like drifting
vapour, semi-pellucid, preternatural, and seemingly tangible. The ocean
itself appeared admonished that a quick and violent change was nigh. The
waves ceased to break in their former foaming and brilliant crests, and
black masses of the water lifted their surly summits against the eastern
horizon, no longer shedding their own peculiar and lucid atmosphere
around them. The breeze which had been so fresh, and which had even
blown with a force that nearly amounted to a gale, was lulling and
becoming uncertain, as it might be awed by the more violent power that
was gathering along the borders of the sea, in the direction of the
neighbouring continent. Each moment, the eastern puffs of air lost their
strength, becoming more and more feeble, until, in an incredibly short