s upon deck. Like
a salamander he passes across the burning deck with unscathed feet,
and glides through the stifling smoke with unchoked breath. Not a sound
escapes his lips.

Another loud report; the long-boat is shivered into fragments; the
middle panel bursts the tarpaulin that covered it, and a stream of fire,
free at length from the restraint that had held it, rises half-mast
high.

"The picrate! the picrate!" shrieks the madman; "we shall all be blown
up! the picrate will blow us all up."

And in an instant, before we can get near him, he has hurled himself,
through the open hatchway, down into the fiery furnace below.

CHAPTER XIV.

OCTOBER 29th:--NIGHT.--The scene, as night came on, was terrible indeed.
Notwithstanding the desperateness of our situation, however, there
was not one of us so paralyzed by fear, but that we fully realized the
horror of it all.

Poor Ruby, indeed, is lost and gone, but his last words were productive
of serious consequences. The sailors caught his cry of "Picrate,
picrate!" and being thus for the first time made aware of the true
nature of their peril, they resolved at every hazard to accomplish their
escape. Beside themselves with terror, they either did not or would
not, see that no boat could brave the tremendous waves that were raging
around, and accordingly they made a frantic rush towards the yawl.
Curtis again made a vigorous endeavour to prevent them, but this time
all in vain; Owen urged them on, and already the tackling was loosened,
so that the boat was swung over to the ship's side, For a moment it hung
suspended in mid-air, and then, with a final effort from the sailors, it
was quickly lowered into the sea. But scarcely had it touched the water,
when it was caught by an enormous wave which, recoiling with resistless
violence, dashed it to atoms against the "Chancellor's" side.

The men stood aghast; they were dumbfoundered. Long-boat and yawl both
gone, there was nothing now remaining to us but a small whale-boat. Not
a word was spoken; not a sound was heard but the hoarse whistling of
the wind, and the mournful roaring of the flames. From the centre of the
ship, which was hollowed out like a furnace, there issued a column of
sooty vapour that ascended to the sky. All the passengers, and several
of the crew, took refuge in the aft-quarters of the poop. Mrs. Kear
was lying senseless on one of the hen-coops, with Miss Herbey sitting
passively at her side; M. L