o have escaped this danger
to be hurled against the rocks, or crushed in the encounter of the two
vessels, one group was especially worthy of the most tender and painful
interest. Taking refuge abaft, a tall old man, with bald forehead and
gray moustache, had lashed himself to a stanchion, by winding a piece of
rope round his body, whilst he clasped in his arms, and held fast to his
breast, two girls of fifteen or sixteen, half enveloped in a pelisse of
reindeer-skin. A large, fallow, Siberian dog, dripping with water, and
barking furiously at the waves, stood close to their feet.

These girls, clasped in the arms of the old man, also pressed close to
each other; but, far from being lost in terror, they raised their
eyes to heaven, full of confidence and ingenuous hope, as though they
expected to be saved by the intervention of some supernatural power.

A frightful shriek of horror and despair, raised by the passengers of
both vessels, was heard suddenly above the roar of the tempest. At the
moment when, plunging deeply between two waves, the broadside of the
steamer was turned towards the bows of the ship, the latter, lifted to
a prodigious height on a mountain of water, remained, as it were,
suspended over the "William Tell," during the second which preceded the
shock of the two vessels.

There are sights of so sublime a horror, that it is impossible to
describe them. Yet, in the midst of these catastrophes, swift as
thought, one catches sometimes a momentary glimpse of a picture, rapid
and fleeting, as if illumined by a flash of lightning.

Thus, when the "Black Eagle," poised aloft by the flood, was about
to crash down upon the "William Tell," the young man with the angelic
countenance and fair, waving locks bent over the prow of the ship, ready
to cast himself into the sea to save some victim. Suddenly, he perceived
on board the steamer, on which he looked down from the summit of
the immense wave, the two girls extending their arms towards him in
supplication. They appeared to recognize him, and gazed on him with a
sort of ecstacy and religious homage!

For a second, in spite of the horrors of the tempest, in spite of the
approaching shipwreck, the looks of those three beings met. The features
of the young man were expressive of sudden and profound pity; for the
maidens with their hands clasped in prayer, seemed to invoke him as
their expected Saviour. The old man, struck down by the fall of a plank,
lay helpl