with a firm step, and an eye too proud to
quail before the plainest symptoms of insubordination. "Is it you, sir,
who should be foremost in exertion at a moment like this, who dare to set
an example of disobedience?"

The mate recoiled a pace, and his lips moved, still he uttered no audible
reply. Wilder once more bade him, in a calm and authoritative tone, lay
his own hands to the brake. Nighthead then found his voice, in time to
make a flat refusal; and, at the next moment, he was felled to the feet of
his indignant Commander, by a blow he had neither the address nor the
power to resist. This act of decision was succeeded by one single moment
of breathless, wavering silence among the crew; and then the common cry,
and the general rush of every man upon our defenceless and solitary
adventurer, were the signals that open hostility had commenced. A shriek
from the quarter-deck arrested their efforts; just as a dozen hands were
laid violently upon the person of Wilder, and, for the moment, occasioned
a truce. It was the fearful cry of Gertrude, which possessed even the
influence to still the savage intentions of a set of beings so rude and so
unnurtured as those whose passions had just been awakened into fierce
activity. Wilder was released; and all eyes turned, by a common impulse,
in the direction of the sound.

During the more momentous hours of the past night, the very existence of
the passengers below had been forgotten by most of those whose duty kept
them to the deck. If they had been recalled at all to the recollection of
any, it was at those fleeting moments when the mind of the young mariner,
who directed the movements of the ship, found leisure to catch stolen
glimpses of softer scenes than the wild warring of the elements that was
so actively raging before his eyes. Nighthead had named them, as he would
have made allusion to a part of the cargo, but their fate had little
influence on his hardened nature. Mrs Wyllys and her charge had therefore
remained below during the whole period, perfectly unapprised of the
disasters of the intervening time. Buried in the recesses of their births,
they had heard the roaring of the winds, and the incessant washing of the
waters; but these usual accompaniments of a storm had served to conceal
the crashing of masts, and the hoarse cries of the mariners. For the
moments of terrible suspense while the Bristol trader lay on her side, the
better informed governess had, indeed, som