The spectacle that met our vision as we reached the deck, drove at once, all the excitement of our potations off; and we were as calm and collected in a second after leaving the gang-way, as if we had kept above during the whole evening. Never can I forget that moment. The rain was pouring down in torrents, not perpendicularly, however, but slant-wise, as it was driven before the hurricane. Now it beat fiercely into our faces, and now was whirled hither and thither in wild commotion. Around, all was dark as pitch. We could not see a dozen fathoms in any direction, except where the white crests of the surges flashed through the gloom. These could, however, be detected close under our lee glancing through the darkness, while the dull continued roar in that quarter, betokened our immediate vicinity to breakers. They were in fact, close aboard. Had they not been detected the instant they were, we should have run on to them the next minute, and perished to a soul. Happily we had just room to wear. This had been done before we were summoned on deck. We had now close-hauled every thing, and were endeavoring, as our only hope, to claw off the shore. The next fifteen minutes were spent in that agonising suspense, for more terrible than death itself, which men experience when the king of terror smiles grimly in their faces, and yet witholds the blow. As we gazed out, through the driving rain, upon the dimly seen breakers on our starboard beam, and heard their wild monotonous roar as of hounds yelling for their prey, a sense of inexpressible awe stole upon our minds, which, though totally devoid of fear, was yet appalling. Who knew but that, before another hour, aye! before a quarter of that time, our mangled bodies might be floating at the mercy of the surge? Every moment deepened our anxiety, for though our little craft breasted the waves with gallant determination, sending the spray as high as her mast head at every plunge, yet there was no perceptible increase in our distance from the shore. Fierce, and fiercer, meanwhile, grew the tempest. The surge roared under our lee; the wind howled by like the wailings of the damned; and the occasional lightnings, which now began to illuminate the scene, lit up the whole firmament a moment with their ghastly glare, and then left it shrouded in darkness deeper than that of the day of doom. At intervals the thunder bellowed overhead or went crackling in prolonged echoes down the sky. The schooner groaned and quivered in every timber. Now we rose to the heavens; now wallowed in the abyss. The men, grasping each a rope, looked ominously at the scene around, or cast hurried glances aloft as if fearful that our masts would not stand the strain. “Hark!” said Westbrook, who stood beside me, “was not that a gun?—there again?” As he spoke the sullen roar of a cannon boomed across the deep, and for several successive minutes, in the intervals of the thunder, followed the same awful sound. We looked at each other.