is friend's assurance, strained his
eyes in the fruitless search for land, and when at last the darkness
fell he went below and laid out his fringed hunting tunic, his leather
gaiters, and his raccoon-skin cap, which were very much more to his
taste than the broadcloth coat in which the Dutch mercer of New York had
clad him. De Catinat had also put on the dark coat of civil life, and
he and Adele were busy preparing all things for the old man, who had
fallen so weak that there was little which he could do for himself.
A fiddle was screaming in the forecastle, and half the night through
hoarse bursts of homely song mingled with the dash of the waves and the
whistle of the wind, as the New England men in their own grave and
stolid fashion made merry over their home-coming.

The mate's watch that night was from twelve to four, and the moon was
shining brightly for the first hour of it. In the early morning,
however, it clouded over, and the _Golden Rod_ plunged into one of those
dim clammy mists which lie on all that tract of ocean. So thick was it
that from the poop one could just make out the loom of the foresail, but
could see nothing of the fore-topmast-stay sail or the jib. The wind
was north-east with a very keen edge to it, and the dainty brigantine
lay over, scudding along with her lee rails within hand's touch of the
water. It had suddenly turned very cold--so cold that the mate stamped
up and down the poop, and his four seamen shivered together under the
shelter of the bulwarks. And then in a moment one of them was up,
thrusting with his forefinger into the air and screaming, while a huge
white wall sprang out of the darkness at the very end of the bowsprit,
and the ship struck with a force which snapped her two masts like dried
reeds in a wind, and changed her in an instant to a crushed and
shapeless heap of spars and wreckage.

The mate had shot the length of the poop at the shock, and had narrowly
escaped from the falling mast, while of his four men two had been hurled
through the huge gap which yawned in the bows, while a third had dashed
his head to pieces against the stock of the anchor. Tomlinson staggered
forwards to find the whole front part of the vessel driven inwards, and
a single seaman sitting dazed amid splintered spars, flapping sails, and
writhing, lashing cordage. It was still as dark as pitch, and save the
white crest of a leaping wave nothing was to be seen beyond the side of
the vess