sea" spun his tempestuous yarn
with fascinating composure, and the whole company was awed into silence
with the haggard realism of his narrative. The cabin must have been
air-tight--it was as close as possible--yet we heard the shrieking of
the wind as it tore through the rigging, and the long hiss of the waves
rushing past us with lightning speed. Sometimes an avalanche of foam
buried us for a moment, and the Petrel trembled like a living thing
stricken with sudden fear: we seemed to be hanging on the crust of a
great bubble that was, sooner or later, certain to burst and let us drop
into its vast, black chasm, where in Cimmerian darkness we should be
entombed for ever.

The scenic effect, as I then considered, was unnecessarily vivid: as I
now recall it, it seems to me strictly in keeping and thoroughly
dramatic. At any rate, you might have told us a dreadful story with
almost fatal success.

I had still one letter left--one bearing this suggestive legend: "To be
read in the saddest hour." Now, if there is a sadder hour in all time
than the hour of hopeless and friendless death, I care not to know of
it. I broke the seal of my letter, feeling that something charitable and
cheering would give me strength. A few dried leaves were stored within
it. The faint fragrance of summer bowers reassured me: somewhere in the
blank world of waters there was land, and there Nature was kind and
fruitful: out over the fearful deluge this leaf was borne to me in the
return of the invisible dove my heart had sent forth in its extremity. A
song was written therein, perhaps a song of triumph: I could now silence
the clamorous tongue of our sea-monster, who was glutting us with tales
of horror, for a jubilee was at hand, and here was the first note of its
trumpets.

I read:

Beyond the parting and the meeting
I shall be soon:
Beyond the farewell and the greeting,
Beyond the pulse's fever-beating,
I shall be soon.

I paused. A night black with croaking ravens, brooding over a slimy
hulk, through whose warped timbers the sea oozed--that was the sort of
picture that arose before me. I looked farther for a crumb of comfort:

Beyond the gathering and the strewing
I shall be soon:
Beyond the ebbing and the flowing,
Beyond the coming and the going,
I shall be soon.

A tide of ice-water seemed rippling up and down my spinal column: the
marrow congealed within my bones. But I rec