the same mysterious visitation would have been more than
conclusive. The very appearance of the night, too,
favoured the delusion. The heavens, comparatively clear
at the moment when the canoe approached the vessel, became
suddenly enveloped in the deepest gloom at its departure,
as if to enshroud the course of those who, having so
mysteriously approached, had also so unaccountably
disappeared. Nor had this threatening state of the
atmosphere the counterbalancing advantage of storm and
tempest to drive them onward through the narrow waters
of the Sinclair, and enable them, by anticipating the
pursuit of their enemies, to shun the Scylla and Charybdis
that awaited their more leisure advance. The wind increased
not; and the disappointed seamen remarked, with dismay,
that their craft scarcely made more progress than at the
moment when she first quitted her anchorage.

It was now near the first hours of day; and although,
perhaps, none slept, there were few who were not apparently
at rest, and plunged in the most painful reflections.
Still occupying her humble couch, and shielded from the
night air merely by the cloak that covered her own
blood-stained garments, lay the unhappy Clara, her deep
groans and stifled sobs bursting occasionally from her
pent-up heart, and falling on the ears of the mariners
like sounds of fearful import, produced by the mysterious
agency that already bore such undivided power over their
thoughts. On the bare deck, at her side, lay her brother,
his face turned upon the planks, as if to shut out all
objects from eyes he had not the power to close; and,