loft were still gazing in the
direction in which the little cloud of canvas had disappeared, a lanyard
of the lower rigging parted, with a crack that reached the ears of Wilder.

"Lie down!" he shouted wildly through his trumpet; "down by the
backstays; down for your lives; every man of you, down!"

A solitary individual profited by the warning gliding to the deck with
the velocity of the wind. But rope parted after rope, and the fatal
snapping of the wood followed. For a moment, the towering maze tottered,
seeming to wave towards every quarter of the heavens; and then, yielding
to the movements of the hull, the whole fell, with a heavy crash, into
the sea. Cord, lanyard, and stay snapped like thread, as each received
in succession the strain of the ship, leaving the naked and despoiled
hull of the _Caroline_ to drive before the tempest, as if nothing had
occurred to impede its progress.

A mute and eloquent pause succeeded the disaster. It seemed as if the
elements themselves were appeased by their work, and something like a
momentary lull in the awful rushing of the winds might have been fancied.
Wilder sprang to the side of the vessel, and distinctly beheld the
victims, who still clung to their frail support. He even saw Earing
waving his hand in adieu with a seaman's heart, like a man who not only
felt how desperate was his situation, but who knew how to meet it with
resignation. Then the wreck of spars, with all who clung to it, was
swallowed up in the body of the frightful, preternatural-looking mist
which extended on every side of them, from the ocean to the clouds.

"Stand by, to clear away a boat!" shouted Wilder, without pausing to
think of the impossibility of one's swimming, or of effecting the least
good, in so violent a tornado.

But the amazed and confounded seamen who remained needed no instruction
in this matter. Not a man moved, nor was the smallest symptom of
obedience given. The mariners looked wildly around them, each
endeavouring to trace in the dusky countenance of some shipmate his
opinion of the extent of the evil; but not a mouth opened among them all.

"It is too late--it is too late!" murmured Wilder; "human skill and human
efforts could not save them!"

"Sail, ho!" Knighthead shouted in a voice that was teeming with
superstitious awe.

"Let him come on," returned his young commander, bitterly; "the mischief
is ready done to his hands!"

"Should this be a true ship, it is ou