lf," said the poor little fellow, my companion,
bursting into tears, "if it were not for my mother; but what will my
mother say?" "Wouldn't care neither," said I, with a heavy heart; "but
it's just back water, and we'll get out at twall." We retreated together
into one of the shallower and drier caves, and, clearing a little spot
of its rough stones, and then groping along the rocks for the dry grass
that in the spring season hangs from them in withered tufts, we formed
for ourselves a most uncomfortable bed, and lay down in one another's
arms. For the last few hours mountainous piles of clouds had been rising
dark and stormy in the sea-mouth: they had flared portentously in the
setting sun, and had worn, with the decline of evening, almost every
meteoric tint of anger, from fiery red to a sombre thundrous brown, and
from sombre brown to doleful black. And we could now at least hear what
they portended, though we could no longer see. The rising wind began to
howl mournfully amid the cliffs, and the sea, hitherto so silent, to
beat heavily against the shore, and to boom, like distress-guns, from
the recesses of the two deep-sea caves. We could hear, too, the beating
rain, now heavier, now lighter, as the gusts swelled or sank; and the
intermittent patter of the streamlet over the deeper cave, now driving
against the precipices, now descending heavily on the stones.

My companion had only the real evils of the case to deal with, and so,
the hardness of our bed and the coldness of the night considered, he
slept tolerably well; but I was unlucky enough to have evils greatly
worse than the real ones to annoy me. The corpse of a drowned seaman had
been found on the beach about a month previous, some forty yards firm
where we lay. The hands and feet, miserably contracted, and corrugated
into deep folds at every joint, yet swollen to twice their proper size,
had been bleached as white as pieces of alumed sheep-skin; and where the
head should have been, there existed only a sad mass of rubbish. I had
examined the body, as young people are apt to do, a great deal too
curiously for my peace; and, though I had never done the poor nameless
seaman any harm, I could not have suffered more from him during that
melancholy night, had I been his murderer. Sleeping or waking, he was
continually before me. Every time I dropped into a doze, he would come
stalking up the beach from the spot where he had lain, with his stiff
white fingers, that