but frightful glimpses of many human
faces, whereon was expressed the indescribable agony of the drowning.

"Perdition!" cried Verrina; "all are gone save Nisida and myself! And
shall we too perish ere she has become mine? shall death separate us ere
I have reveled in her charms? Fool that I was to delay my triumph
hitherto! Fool that I was to be overawed by her impetuous signs, or
melted by her silent though strong appeals!"

He paced the deck in an excited manner as he uttered these words aloud.

"No!" he exclaimed wildly, as the tempest seemed to increase, and the
ship was thrown further on shoal: "she shall not escape me thus, after
all I have done and dared in order to possess her! Our funeral may take
place to-night--but our bridal shall be first. Ha! ha!"--and he laughed
with a kind of despairing mockery, while the fragments of the vessel's
sails flapped against the spars with a din as if some mighty demon were
struggling with the blast. The sense of appalling danger seemed to
madden Stephano only because it threatened to separate him from Nisida;
and, fearfully excited, he rushed toward her, crying wildly, "You shall
be mine!"

But how terrible was the yell which burst from his lips, when by the
glare of a brilliant flash of lightning, he beheld Nisida cast herself
over the side of the vessel!

For a single instant he fell back appalled, horror-struck; but at the
next, he plunged with insensate fury after her. And the rage of the
storm redoubled.

When the misty shades of morning cleared away, and the storm had passed,
Nisida was seated alone upon the strand, having miraculously escaped
that eternal night of death which leads to no dawn. But where was
Stephano Verrina? She knew not; although she naturally conjectured, and
even hoped, that he was numbered with the dead.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE ISLAND IN THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA.

Fair and beauteous was the Mediterranean isle whereon the Lady Nisida
had been thrown.

When the morning mists had dispersed, and the sunbeams tinged the ridges
of the hills and the summits of the tallest trees, Nisida awoke as it
were from the profound lethargic reverie in which she had been plunged
for upward of an hour, since the moment when the billows had borne her
safely to the shore.

The temperature of that island was warm and genial, for there eternal
summer reigned, and thus, though her garments were still dripping wet,
Nisida experienced no cold. She rose fro