must dread!"

"Yes," continued Knighthead, in a voice that sounded hoarse and powerful,
even amid the fearful accessories of that scene; "yes, it is no trifling
commission that can call people that I shall not name out upon the water
in such a night as this. It was in just such weather that I saw the
_Vesuvius_ ketch go to a place so deep, that her own mortar would not
have been able to have sent a bomb into the open air, had hands and fire
been there fit to let it off!"

"Ay; and it was in such a time that the _Greenlandman_ was cast upon the
Orkneys, in as flat a calm as ever lay on the sea."

"Gentlemen," said Wilder, with a peculiar and perhaps an ironical
emphasis on the word, "what would ye have? There is not a breath of air
stirring and the ship is naked to her topsails!"

It would have been difficult for either of the two malcontents to give a
very satisfactory answer to this question. Both were secretly goaded by
mysterious and superstitious apprehensions, that were powerfully aided by
the more real and intelligible aspect of the night; but neither had so
far forgotten his manhood, and his professional pride, as to lay bare the
full extent of his own weakness, at a moment when he was liable to be
called upon for the exhibition of qualities of a more positive and
determined character. The feeling that was uppermost betrayed itself in
the reply of Earing, though in an indirect and covert manner.

"Yes, the vessel is snug enough now," he said, "though eyesight has shown
us it is no easy matter to drive a freighted ship through the water as
fast as one of those flying craft aboard which no man can say who stands