over in the air and yet to come from
underneath the deck under our feet, the tune swelling in intensity as we
all listened, so that every man on board must have heard it as well as
the captain and myself.

And then, just as the last bar was struck with another resounding twang,
a fiercer blast than the first caught the ship on her port quarter, and
she heeled over to starboard until her deck was almost upright, while at
the same time a terrible wave washed over us fore and aft, sweeping
everything movable overboard.

I held on to the weather rigging like `grim Death,' amidst a mass of
seething foam, that flowed over the poop as if it were the open sea,
with the roar of rushing waters around me and the whistling and
shrieking of the wind as it tore through the shrouds and howled and
wailed, sweeping onward away to leeward.

The spirit of the storm seemed to have broken loose; its black
cloud-wings covering the heavens and fanning up the waves into fury, and
then hurling them at the _Denver City_, which, poor, stricken thing,
quailed before the onslaught of the cruel blast and remorseless rolling
billows which followed each other in swift succession. These bore her
down, and down, and down, until she was almost on her beam-ends,
labouring heavily and groaning and creaking in every timber, and looking
as if she were going to capsize every instant.

Not a man on board but thought his last hour had come.

The noise of the raging elements, however, in this mad commotion at once
drowned the sound of the weird, mysterious music that had previously
filled the air, affecting us all so strangely, especially Captain
Snaggs, who seemed to be stricken by a spell as long as the sad strain
echoed in our ears. But, the moment that we ceased to hear the phantom
chaunt, the skipper recovered himself, his sailor instincts getting the
better of his superstitious fears and sudden fright.

Fortunately, he had clutched hold of the poop rail as the fierce gust
caught the vessel, or, otherwise, he would have been carried over the
side, and be struggling for dear life half a mile, at least, astern,
where the hen-coops and casks that had been washed overboard were now
bobbing about, as they sank slowly out of sight on the crest of the wave
that had cleared our decks.

A thorough seaman, in spite of his malevolent disposition and bullying
manner, which, I suppose, he could not help, he knew at once what was
best to be done under the circu