It was still dark when I was aroused from sleep by the calling of the watch, and, hastily springing up, I soon stood upon the deck. The first glance around me proved that O’Hara’s anticipations were fulfilled, for the tempest was thundering through the rigging with an almost stunning voice, driving the fine spray wildly along, and blowing with an intensity that threatened to sweep one overboard. The men, bent before the blast, and wrapped in their thick overcoats, stood like statues half seen through the mist. The night was bitterly cold—the fine spray cut to the marrow. As far as the eye could see, on every hand around us, the sea, flattened until it was nearly as level as a table, was a mass of driving foam. The binnacle lamp burned faint and dim, with a sickly halo, through the fog. Above, however, all was clear, except a few white fleecy clouds, driven wildly across the frosty stars that twinkled in the heavens. As I ran my eye along the tall taper masts, now bending like rushes in the hurricane, I saw that nearly all the canvass had been taken in, and that we were scudding before the tempest with nothing spread but a close-reefed maintopsail, a reefed fore-course, and the foretopmast staysail,—and even these, as they strained in the gale, threatened momently to blow out into ribbons before the resistless fury of the wind. Under this comparative press of canvass, The Arrow was skimming along, seeming to outvie even the spray in velocity. And well was it that she sped onward with such hot haste!—for, on looking astern, I saw the billows howling after us, urging on their white crests in fearful proximity, and threatening at every surge to roll in over our taffrail. Wilder and wilder, more and even more fiercely they raced each other in the pursuit, like a pack of famished wolves pitching and yelling after their prey. “Keep her so,” said the first lieutenant, as he left the deck in charge of his successor, “for you see it is neck and neck with those yelling monsters astern. If the sails are blown from the bolt ropes they must go—but as the canvass is new I think they will stand.” “Ship ahoy!” shouted a look-out at this moment, startling us as though a thunderbolt had fallen at our feet, “a sail athwart hawse.” “Where, where?” exclaimed both the officers incredulously. “Close under our fore-foot—a brig, sir.” “My God, we shall run her down,” was the exclamation of the second lieutenant.