id,
cheerfully, as he sprang into the rigging, and mounted to the
mizzen-top.

It was past two, the moon was waning, and the darkness that comes before
dawn was beginning to gather round the wreck. Behind Allan, as he now
stood looking out from the elevation of the mizzen-top, spread the broad
and lonely sea. Before him were the low, black, lurking rocks, and the
broken waters of the channel, pouring white and angry into the vast calm
of the westward ocean beyond. On the right hand, heaved back grandly
from the water-side, were the rocks and precipices, with their little
table-lands of grass between; the sloping downs, and upward-rolling
heath solitudes of the Isle of Man. On the left hand rose the craggy
sides of the Islet of the Calf, here rent wildly into deep black chasms,
there lying low under long sweeping acclivities of grass and heath. No
sound rose, no light was visible, on either shore. The black lines of
the topmost masts of the wreck looked shadowy and faint in the darkening
mystery of the sky; the land breeze had dropped; the small shoreward
waves fell noiseless: far or near, no sound was audible but the
cheerless bubbling of the broken water ahead, pouring through the awful
hush of silence in which earth and ocean waited for the coming day.

Even Allan's careless nature felt the solemn influence of the time. The
sound of his own voice startled him when he looked down and hailed his
friend on deck.

"I think I see one house," he said. "Here-away, on the mainland to the
right." He looked again, to make sure, at a dim little patch of white,
with faint white lines behind it, nestling low in a grassy hollow,
on the main island. "It looks like a stone house and inclosure," he
resumed. "I'll hail it, on the chance." He passed his arm round a rope
to steady himself, made a speaking-trumpet of his hands, and suddenly
dropped them again without uttering a sound. "It's so awfully quiet,"
he whispered to himself. "I'm half afraid to call out." He looked down
again on deck. "I shan't startle you, Midwinter, shall I?" he said, with
an uneasy laugh. He looked once more at the faint white object, in
the grassy hollow. "It won't do to have come up here for nothing," he
thought, and made a speaking-trumpet of his hands again. This time he
gave the hail with the whole power of his lungs. "On shore there!" he
shouted, turning his face to the main island. "Ahoy-hoy-hoy!"

The last echoes of his voice died away and were los