fast asleep showing how much
self-command he must have exercised to keep awake at his post. In the
meantime, while two men continued baling and one kept a look-out ahead,
the rest stretched their limbs as well as they could along the thwarts
of the boat and went to sleep. My fear was that they might not be able
again to arouse themselves. Strange, indeed, were my feelings as I sat
in the stern of the boat while she flew hissing along over the foaming
waves and plunging into the dark unknown. I looked up into the clear
sky, glittering with innumerable stars, and my mind wandered from the
present world to the wonders of eternity, which the scene I gazed on
seemed to picture forth. I forcibly felt the insufficiency of this
world to satisfy to the full the aspirations of man's soul; and the
reality of the life to come, and all that that life will have to show,
impressed itself more vividly on my mind than it had ever before done.
The glories of the eternal future put to flight all fears for the
present perishable body.

Still, I did not neglect my duty to my companions. I did my best to
keep my mates of the watch awake. I watched the seas as they came
rolling up on either side, so that I might keep the boat steadily before
the wind. Thus the first watch passed by. I had not the heart to call
La Motte. I told the other three men to arouse up their companions, and
I resolved to keep awake for a couple of hours more. An hour after this
it might have been, as I turned my head over my right shoulder, I caught
sight of a huge towering mass close aboard, as it seemed.

It was a large ship. On she came. I felt sure that our last moments
had arrived. There was no use shouting. The other men looked up.
Terror kept them dumb. Had we indeed strained our voices till they
cracked, no one would have heard us on board the ship. The dark pyramid
of canvas seemed to reach up to the very clouds as she flew along,
careering before the gale.

In another moment I thought we should have been run down, and struggling
under her vast keel, but my eye had deceived me. She dashed on; but
instead of her stem striking us, her broadside appeared on our starboard
hand. She was a line-of-battle ship of the largest class. Then,
indeed, we found our voices and shouted, and perhaps the sentries or
look-outs might have heard us; but away she rushed, like some monstrous
phantom of a dream, and, mighty as she was, she quickly disappeared in