for we were lying our course, and the
skipper was in a hurry to bring our protracted voyage to an end. We
made much more leeway than we reckoned, however, for just at sunset
the high mountains of Cuba were to be seen faintly looming up on the
southern horizon.

"Brace up, there," ordered Captain Smith, when this fact was
announced. "Luff, my man, luff, and keep her as near it as you may."

The old ship came up on the wind, presenting her front most gallantly
to the angry waves, which came on as high as the fore-yard,
threatening to engulf her in the watery abyss. We took in all our
top-sails but the main, and with that, a reefed fore-sail and
foretopmast-staysail set, the old ship shook her feathers, and
prepared herself for an all-night job of clawing off an iron-bound
lee-shore.

The hatches were battened down, the fore-scuttle and companion closed,
and all the crew collected aft on deck and lashed themselves to some
substantial object, to save themselves from being washed over-board by
the immense seas which constantly broke over our bows, and deluged our
decks. The night closed down darker than pitch, and the wind increased
in violence. I have scarcely ever seen so dismal a night. Except when
at intervals a blinding flash of lightning illumined the whole heavens
and the broad expanse of raging ocean, we could distinguish nothing at
a yard's distance, save the glimmer of the phosphorescent binacle
light, and the gleam which flashed from the culmination of the huge
seas ahead of us, resembling an extended cloud of dull fire suspended
in the air, and blown toward us, till, with a noise like thunder, as
it dashed against the bows, it vanished, and another misty fire was to
be seen as if rising out of some dark gulf. At midnight it blew a
hurricane; the wind cut off the tops of the waves, and the air was
full of spray and salt, driving like sleet or snow before the wintry
storm. I had ensconced myself under the lee of the bulwarks, among a
knot of select weather-beaten tars, and notwithstanding the danger we
were in, I could not help being somewhat amused at their
conversation.

"Jack," said Teddy, an Irish sailor, to the ship's oracle, old Jack
Reeves, "do you think the sticks will howld?"

"If they don't," growled Jack, "you'll be in h--l before morning."

"Och, Jasus!" was the only reply to this consolatory remark--and there
was an uneasy nestling throughout the whole circle.

"Well, Frank," said old Jack to