his prediction, declaring that he kept the
whole crew in a state of alarm, and vowing that if he foretold another
tempest he would throw him overboard. The old man, who had a
considerable opinion of his own talents, calmly replied, "_experientia
docet_."

Cedric, from being one of the most daring and reckless spirits of his
age, on hearing the above parley, and aware of their proximity to a
rocky and dangerous shore, became terrified. The fear of a wreck
overcame his once undaunted but now agitated frame, and a stiff glass of
grog was found necessary to support him.

At midnight (having previously been sleeping soundly, composed by the
soporific effects of the dram, lulled by the music of the rising breeze,
and the gentle undulations of the reeling vessel) he was flung several
yards from his hammock, and received a contusion on the head, which for
some time deprived him of his senses. When he had somewhat recovered,
the rocking of the vessel, the howling of the wind, and the creeking of
the timbers, told him but too truly that the old man's prophecy was
being fulfilled.

He went hastily on deck, half dressed and nearly frantic through fear,
to ascertain his opinion of the probable extent of the danger to which
they were exposed. But, alas! the old man, who had been placed at the
helm as the only person capable of conducting the vessel in so perilous
a situation, had been swept overboard by one of the early surges. He
spoke to many, but none seemed disposed to listen to him; each person
being too much engaged with his own concerns to attend to those of
others.

Every hand seemed paralyzed; the vessel without a steersman at the
helm--without a sailor to haul down a shroud, was cleaving the ocean at
the mercy of the winds and the waves!

His sense of guilt at this moment was overpowering; hitherto (partly
occasioned by ignorance, and partly by depraved habits of life) a degree
of thoughtlessness had possessed him, which it is almost impossible to
conceive could reign in the breast of a being endued with reason. Now
indeed his eyes were open to his fate--to his earthly fate; a strange
foreboding came upon him; it was a species of instinctive horror; he
could not look beyond it. Whether there was a being who ruled the world,
or whether there was not, had never been the subject of his meditations;
yet a secret whisper intimated to him that death would not be the bound
of his hopes and his fears--of his joys and his sorr