on it.” The soul was quitting its frail tenement but the child’s voice so far recalled it, that a slight look of recognition lightened the face. “Och, stay wid me, granny, an I’ll do yer biddin and nivir vix ye agin. We’ll soon be havin lashins of meat an wather, an ye wunna need to be givin me your share. O stay wid me!” At that moment there was a report of a musket fired near by. The passengers, grouped around the dying woman, raised their startled eyes and saw it was the mate, who had fired at the sea fowl on the rocks we were now passing. The angry scowl at the interruption melted again into sorrow when Aileen, lifting the gray head from her lap, reverently straightened it on the deck, and leaving the body to the care of the women who crowded near, led the sobbing girl, doubly orphaned, to our cabin. At sunset we buried the body and with it that of a poor cripple, who had been suffering from dysentery. We sat late that night, for the breeze was warm and the speed of the ship exhilarating, while the waters sparkled in the moonlight. I had been in bed some time, when voices outside wakened me. It was the boatswain and a sailor who were talking, and the sound of their voices seemed to express astonishment. I dressed and hurried out. “Is there anything gone wrong?” I asked. “Did you ever see the like of that?” the boatswain replied, by pointing to the sky. The wind had fallen and glancing up the masts I saw sail, and rope, and block were motionless. Above hung clouds the like of which I had never seen. There were thousands of them, all about a size, all spherical, and all placed together as exactly as the panes in a cathedral window. Though hid from view, the moon was in the zenith, and its downward rays fell on the cloudlets, illuminating them and transmitting a ghostly light, reflected by a ghostly sea. From the horizon to the apex the illusion of the clouds was perfect in representing the ship as standing beneath the centre of a great dome composed of spheres of grey glass, through which streamed a light mysterious and fearsome, revealing the face of a glassy sea, dark and dread. “What weather does this portend?” I whispered. The boatswain shook his head. “It ain’t weather, sir,” said the sailor, “It’s death. You see if the fever don’t grow worse.”