intention; and, with precisely the
same pride of station as had urged him to the dangerous undertaking, four
or five of the older mariners jumped upon the ratlings, to mount with him
into an air that apparently teemed with a hundred hurricanes.

"Lie down out of that fore-rigging," shouted Wilder, through a
deck-trumpet; "lie down; all, but the mate, lie down!" His words were
borne past the inattentive ears of the excited and mortified followers of
Earing, but they failed of their effect. Each man was too much bent on his
own earnest purpose to listen to the sounds of recall. In less than a
minute, the whole were scattered along the yards, prepared to obey the
signal of their officer. The mate cast a look about him; and, perceiving
that the time was comparatively favourable, he struck a blow upon the
large rope that confined one of the angles of the distended and bursting
sail to the lower yard. The effect was much the same as would be produced
by knocking away the key-stone of an ill-cemented arch. The canvas broke
from all its fastenings with a loud explosion, and, for an instant, was
seen sailing in the air ahead of the ship, as though sustained on the
wings of an eagle. The vessel rose on a sluggish wave--the lingering
remains of the former breeze--and then settled heavily over the rolling
surge, borne down alike by its own weight and the renewed violence of the
gusts. At this critical instant while the seamen aloft 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 even reached the
ears of Wilder.

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

A solitary individual, of them all, profited by the warning, and was seen
gliding towards the deck with the velocity of the wind. But rope parted
after rope, and the fatal snapping of the wood instantly followed. For a
moment, the towering maze tottered, and seemed 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. Each cord, lanyard, or
stay snapped, when it received the strain of its new position, as though
it had been made of thread, leaving the naked and despoiled hull of the
"Caroline" to drive onward before the tempest, as if nothing had occurred
to impede its progress.

A mute and eloquent pause succeede