shivering,
helpless beings, with the life that seemed receding from them--that hour
of horror revealed them to themselves and to others: there would be no
more smiling lips over blackest hearts; no more bold looks over craven
spirits; those murderous waters, as they dashed them to and fro, wrung
from them the very secrets of their souls.

There were some there who carried a fair name through the world, and won
honor and praise for their virtuous living, that now shrieked out to the
pitiless winds, the detail of crimes which had deformed their soul
unseen. There were others who had seemed full of love to the beings who
cherished them, and now stole the rope or the spar from their straining
hands, that they might save themselves therewith whilst they left these
to perish; but still, whatever shape the frenzy of that perishing crew
might take, whether their cries were of remorse, or prayer, or impotent
rage, but one desire and instinct seemed to animate them all--the desire
into which every energy of their soul was gathered up and
concentrated--for the mortal life that was being rent from their
passionate grasp.

Life! life! it had been to many of them a torturer, full of anguish and
disappointments--a hard taskmaster, driving them on from day to day with
weary feet and heavy heart, as over arid deserts where no sweet waters
were springing from the wells of human love, or friendship, to slake
their thirst for sympathy; they had prayed for death, they had writhed
in the power of this life, and sought to be rid of it, as a prisoner of
his bonds,--and now, when the bubbling waves came sweeping over the deck
to their very throat, there uprose in each heart such an intensity of
love for it, that all other thoughts were swallowed up in this one
burning wish. They cared not who perished round them, the dearest and
the best; they cared not what torments it might bring them in the
future, only let them not feel its warm breath departing from their
lips, its throbbing from their heart.

Now, in the midst of all these beings hanging between life and
death--maddened by their terror for the one, and their passion for the
other--there were two who maintained a perfect serenity, and looked with
quiet eye and smiling face, upon the boiling surge which threatened to
ingulf them. The first of these was a young girl, who had been lashed to
a mast, against which she leant quite motionless; she was one of those
sweet spring flowers, whose