the tempest with the steadiness of a water-god.
There was sublimity in the intelligence, deliberation, and calculating
skill, with which this solitary, unknown, and nearly hopeless, mariner
obeyed his professional instinct, in that fearful concussion of the
elements, which, loosened from every restraint, now appeared abandoned to
their own wild and fierce will. He threw aside his cap, pushed forward his
thick but streaming locks, as veils to protect his eyes, and watched the
first encounter of the wind, as the wary but sullen lion keeps his gaze on
the hostile elephant. A grim smile stole across his features, when he felt
the vessel settle again into its watery bed, after that breathless moment
in which there had been reason to fear it might actually be lifted from
its proper element. Then the precaution, which had seemed so useless and
incomprehensible to others, came in play. The bark made a fearful whirl
from the spot where it had so long lain, yielding to the touch of the gust
like a vane turning on its pivot, while the water gurgled several streaks
on deck. But the cables were no sooner taut than the numerous anchors
resisted, and brought the bark head to wind. Maso felt the yielding of the
vessel's stern, as she swung furiously round, and he cheered aloud. The
trembling of the timbers, the dashing against the pointed beak, and that
high jet of water, which shot up over the bows and fell heavily on the
forecastle, washing aft in a flood, were so many evidences that the cables
were true. Advancing from his post, with some such dignity as a master of
fence displays in the exercise of his art, he shouted for his dog.

"Nettuno!--Nettuno!--where art thou, brave Nettuno?"

The faithful animal was whining near him, unheard in that war of the
elements. He waited only for this encouragement to act. No sooner was his
master's voice heard, than, barking bravely, he snuffed the gale, dashed
to the side of the vessel, and leaped into the boiling lake.

When Melchior de Willading and his friend returned to the surface, after
their plunge, it was like men making their appearance in a world abandoned
to the infernal humors of the fiends of darkness. The reader will
understand it was at the instant of the swoop of the winds, that has just
been detailed, for what we have taken so many pages to describe in words,
scarce needed a minute of time in the accomplishment.

Maso knelt on the verge of the gangway, sustaining himself by pa