ling and murmuring among themselves.
The captain's manner, as he urged them on with oaths and threats,
convinced me we were in danger. I looked again to windward. The one
little cloud had enlarged to a great bank of murky vapor, and the sea at
the horizon had changed in color.

"The squall will be on us before we know where we are," said the
captain. "Go below; you will be only in the way here."

I descended to the cabin, and prepared Monkton for what was coming.
He was still questioning me about what I had observed on deck when the
storm burst on us. We felt the little brig strain for an instant as if
she would part in two, then she seemed to be swinging round with us,
then to be quite still for a moment, trembling in every timber. Last
came a shock which hurled us from our seats, a deafening crash, and a
flood of water pouring into the cabin. We clambered, half drowned, to
the deck. The brig had, in the nautical phrase, "broached to," and she
now lay on her beam-ends.

Before I could make out anything distinctly in the horrible confusion
except the one tremendous certainty that we were entirely at the mercy
of the sea, I heard a voice from the fore part of the ship which stilled
the clamoring and shouting of the rest of the crew in an instant. The
words were in Italian, but I understood their fatal meaning only too
easily. We had sprung a leak, and the sea was pouring into the ship's
hold like the race of a mill-stream. The captain did not lose his
presence of mind in this fresh emergency. He called for his ax to cut
away the foremast, and, ordering some of the crew to help him, directed
the others to rig out the pumps.

The words had hardly passed his lips before the men broke into open
mutiny. With a savage look at me, their ringleader declared that the
passengers might do as they pleased, but that he and his messmates were
determined to take to the boat, and leave the accursed ship, and _the
dead man in her,_ to go to the bottom together. As he spoke there was a
shout among the sailors, and I observed some of them pointing derisively
behind me. Looking round, I saw Monkton, who had hitherto kept close at
my side, making his way back to the cabin. I followed him directly,
but the water and confusion on deck, and the impossibility, from the
position of the brig, of moving the feet without the slow assistance
of the hands, so impeded my progress that it was impossible for me to
overtake him. When I had got below h