Another hour passed, during which we steered by the lights of the men-of-war. By the end of that period we had run, according to our calculation, into the very heart of the fleet, leaving a man-of-war broad on our larboard beam, a mile or two distant. This latter vessel we fancied to be the frigate which had been hovering towards nightfall in the rear of the fleet. Our anxiety now increased. We were surrounded, on every side, by the vessels of the convoy, and the obscurity was so profound that we could not see a pistol shot on any hand. Our progress, meantime, was continued in utter silence. The only sound we heard was the singing of the wind through the rigging, the occasional cheeping of a block, or the rushing of the water along our sides. Suddenly, however, I thought I heard a sound as of the bracing of a yard right over our starboard bow. “Hist!” I said to the boatswain, who happened that moment to be passing, “hist! do you hear that?” The old fellow stopped, listened a moment, and then shaking his head, said, “I hear nothing. What did _you_ hear?” “Hark! there it goes again,” I said, as the sound of a sail flapping against a mast came distinctly out of the gloom. “By St. George, you are right,” exclaimed the old water-rat, “ay! ay! young ears are arter-all the sharpest!” He had scarcely spoken before the tall masts of a ship, like a spectre rising through the night, lifted themselves up out of the obscurity in the direction whence the sound had proceeded, and instantaneously we heard the tramping of many feet on the decks of the stranger, the rapid orders of the officers, the running of ropes, the creaking of yards, and the dull flapping of sails in the wind. At the same time a voice hailed, “Luff up or you’ll be into us,” and then the same voice spoke as if addressing the helmsman on board the stranger, “up with your helm—around, around with her—my God! we’ll be afoul.”