till prolonging the sound when the comb of a wave went over me,
and half blinded as well as smothered, I was tumbled headlong down
into the trough of the sea, which I reached more dead than alive. I
was still so exhausted when I rose on the next billow that I could not
speak.

With agony inexpressible I now saw myself nearly abreast of the
frigate. Another descent, another mad whirl upward, and I found her
shooting from me. I was now almost delirious with despair,

"Hillo!--ahoy!" I cried. "Oh! for the love of God, hear me!"

I fancied I saw a look-out turn toward me. I knew he must have heard
me. If I could have remained on the top of that surge an instant
longer his eye would have fallen on me; but the insatiate gulf
demanded me, and seized in the embraces of the pitiless waters, I was
hurried downward to darkness and death.

When I next rose to the light of day, the man-of-war was fast
receding. I was so utterly drenched, so breathless from being nearly
smothered, that I could not raise my voice above that of a child, and
hence failed to attract the attention of the look-out whom I still saw
gazing in search of me. May Heaven grant that none who read these
words may ever experience feelings similar to mine at that moment! In
another instant I had recovered my voice, but the frigate was now out
of hearing.

Suddenly, just as I was giving way to despair, I saw in the distance a
large ship driving before the gale, under a reefed maintop-sail and
storm stay-sail. She was heading directly toward me. This afforded a
new gleam of hope. If I could but arrest her attention, I thought I
should be rescued. I forgot that it would be first necessary to throw
her into the wind, and that the risk of her broaching-to in this
manoeuvre would probably prevent her paying any attention to my cries.

On she came, racing like some mad courser, yet riding the gigantic
billows buoyantly as a bird. Now half enveloped in the driving
foam--now rolling her vast yard-arms almost to the water--now showing
her keel as far back as the dripping fore-chains, she presented a
spectacle of the most terrible sublimity. The scene around, too, added
to the awful majesty of the picture. Just as she rose on a colossal
wave, in the trough of which I was buried an immense distance beneath
her, a flash of lightning blazed across her track, while, at the same
instant, the clouds rolled away behind her, as if lifted like a
curtain, and the sun burst forth