illness was in the air which so often preludes a terrific storm in the
tropics. A rumbling was heard in the sky like the sound of distant
artillery, or heavy bodies of water falling from immense heights.

Then the surface of the sea was broken by mimic waves tipped with froth,
and the vast expanse seemed like a prairie in a snow fall.

The lightning became more frequent and vivid, and the thunder seemed
breaking on the very topmasts of the vessel. Then the starless night sunk
down on the ocean, and the sea raved in the gathering darkness. The storm
was at its height: the wind,

"Through unseen sluices of the air,"

tore the shrouds to strings, and bent the dizzy, tapering masts till they
threatened to snap. But the bark bore bravely through it, while the huge
waves seemed bearing her down to those coral labyrinths, where nothing goes

"But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange."

The thunder sent forth peal after peal, and the heaven was like "a looming
bastion fringed with fire." On through the slanting rain sped the ship,
creaking and groaning, with its ribs warped and its great oaken spine
trembling. The sailors on deck clung to the bulwarks; and below not a soul
could sleep, for the thunder and the creaking of cordage filled their ears.

At midnight the storm abated; but the sea still ran dangerously high, and
the wind sobbed through the rigging mournfully. The heaven was spangled
with tremulous stars, and at the horizon the clouds hung down in gossamer
folds--God's robe trailing in the sea!

Toward morning the waves grew suddenly calm, as if they had again heard
that voice which of old said, "Peace, be still!" There was no one above
decks, save the man at the wheel, who ever and anon muttered to himself, or
hummed bits of poetry. He was a man in the mellow of life, in the Indian
summer of manhood, which comes a little while before one falls "into the
sere and yellow leaf." Once he must have been eminently handsome; but there
were furrows on his intellectual forehead not traced by time's fingers. His
eyes were peculiarly wild and restless.

The slightest tinge of red fringed the East, and as the man watched it
grow deeper and deeper, he sang snatches of those odd sea-songs which
Shakespeare scatters through his plays:

"The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margary,
But none of us cared for