nly serve to make him sensible to all the accumulated horrors of his
situation. I shuddered as I contemplated the possibility that I might
be the most wretched one, the last of all to sink and perish. At
length, I began to imagine that my mind was actually beginning to fail,
and that I was becoming delirious. At first it was but a fearful
suspicion. Soon, however, it took such strong possession of me, that I
was compelled to relinquish all thought of sleep. Sitting up, I saw
that Arthur was awake and by the side of Johnny. His face was upturned,
and his hands clasped as if in prayer. I could see his lips move, and
even the tears trickling from beneath his closed lids, for the moonlight
fell upon his countenance. He did not observe me, and after a few
moments he laid down again without speaking, and soon appeared to
slumber like the rest.

Pressing my hands to my head, I leaned over the stern, my face almost
touching the water. A current of cooler air was stirring close to the
surface, as if it were the breathing of the sea, for there was no wind.
How preternaturally still every thing seemed--what an intensity of
silence! How softly the pale moonlight rested upon the water! A grand
and solemn repose wrapped the heavens and the ocean--no sound beneath
all that vast blue dome--no motion, but the heaving of the long sluggish
swell. Gradually I became calmer; the excitement and perturbation of my
mind began to subside, and at length I felt as though I could sleep. As
I resumed my place by the side of Browne, he moved, as if about to
awake, and murmured indistinctly some broken sentences. From the words
that escaped him, he was dreaming of that far-off home which he was to
behold no more. In fancy he was wandering again by the banks of the
Clyde, the scene of many a school-boy ramble. But it seemed as though
the shadow of present realities darkened even his dreams, and he beheld
these familiar haunts no longer in the joyous light of early days. "How
strange it looks!" he muttered slowly, "how dark the river is--how deep
and dark!--it seems to me it was not so _then_, Robert." Truly,
companion in suffering, this is no falsely coloured dream of thine, for
we have all come at last into deep and dark waters!

CHAPTER TEN.

A SAIL.

THE CACHELOT AND HIS ASSAILANTS--THE COURSE--NEW ACQUAINTANCES.

"Strange creatures round us sweep:
Strange things come up to look at us,
The monsters of the deep."