vibrated through the metal rigging, and yet the sea rose
with a heavy swell as though it felt the warnings of a coming tempest.

All at once, at about eleven o'clock, the moon burst brightly forth
through a rift in the clouds, and the waves sparkled again as if
illumined by a submarine glimmer. I start up and look around me. Is it
merely imagination? or do I really see a black speck floating on the
dazzling whiteness of the waters, a speck that cannot be a rock; because
it rises and falls with the heaving motion of the billows? But the moon
once again becomes overclouded; the sea, is darkened, and I return to my
uneasy couch close to the larboard shrouds.

CHAPTER XXVII.

DECEMBER 6th.--I must have fallen asleep for a few hours, when at four
o'clock in the morning, I was rudely aroused by the roaring of the
wind, and could distinguish Curtis's voice as he shouted in the brief
intervals between the heavy gusts.

I got up, and holding tightly to the purlin--for the waves made the
masts tremble with their violence--I tried to look around and below me.
The sea was literally raging beneath, and great masses of livid-looking
foam were dashing between the masts, which were oscillating
terrifically. It was still dark, and I could only faintly distinguish
two figures on the stern, whom, by the sound of their voices, that I
caught occasionally above the tumult, I made out to be Curtis and the
boatswain.

Just at that moment a sailor, who had mounted to the main-top to do
something to the rigging, passed close behind me.

"What's the matter?" I asked,

"The wind has changed," he answered, adding something which I could not
hear distinctly, but which sounded like "dead against us."

Dead against us! then, thought I, the wind had shifted to the
south-west, and my last night's forebodings had been correct.

When daylight at length appeared, I found the wind although not blowing
actually from the south-west, had veered round to the north-west, a
change which was equally disastrous to us, inasmuch as it was carrying
us away from land. Moreover, the ship had sunk considerably during
the night, and there were now five feet of water above deck; the side
netting had completely disappeared, and the forecastle and the poop were
now all but on a level with the sea, which washed over them incessantly.
With all possible expedition Curtis and his crew were labouring away
at their raft, but the violence of the swell materially impe