mer, indicated that the
vessel had rapidly neared the land; and the direction from which the
report came, proved that she must be close to the promontory of rocks.

"Be smart, my dear fellow; be smart," cried Forster.

"I will go up to the clift, and try if I can make her out;" and the
parties separated upon their mutual work of sympathy and good will.

It was not without danger, as well as difficulty, that Forster succeeded
in his attempt; and when he arrived at the summit, a violent gust of
wind would have thrown him off his legs, had he not sunk down upon his
knees and clung to the herbage, losing his hat, which was borne far away
to leeward. In this position, drenched with the rain and shivering with
the cold, he remained some minutes, attempting in vain, with straining
eyes, to pierce through the gloom of the night, when a flash of
lightning, which darted from the zenith and continued its eccentric
career until it was lost behind the horizon, discovered to him the
object of his research. But a few moments did he behold it, and then,
from the sudden contrast, a film appeared to swim over his aching eyes,
and all was more intensely, more horribly dark than before; but to the
eye of a seafaring man, this short view was sufficient. He perceived
that it was a large ship, within a quarter of a mile of the land,
pressed gunnel under with her reefed courses, chopping through the heavy
seas--now pointing her bowsprit to the Heavens, as she rose over the
impeding swell; now plunging deep into the trough encircled by the foam
raised by her own exertions, like some huge monster of the deep,
struggling in her toils, and lashing the seas around in her violent
efforts to escape.

The fire burnt up fiercely in the cove, in defiance of the rain and
wind, which, after in vain attempting to destroy it in its birth, now
seemed to assist it with their violence.

"She may yet be saved," thought Forster, "if she will only carry on--Two
cables' lengths more, and she will be clear of the point."

Again and again was the vessel momentarily presented to his view, as the
forked lightning darted in every quarter of the firmament, while the
astounding claps of thunder bursting upon his ears before the lightning
had ceased to gleam, announced to him that he was kneeling in the very
centre of the war of the elements. The vessel reared the clift in about
the same proportion that she forged ahead. Forster was breathless with
anxiety, for