For nearly half an hour we drove thus before the hurricane. More than once we fancied that we heard the shrieks of drowning men, rising high over all the uproar of the tempest, but whether they were in reality the cries of the dying or only the sounds created by an overheated imagination and having no existence except in the brain of the hearer, God only knows! A thousand ships might have sunk within a cable’s length of us, and not a prayer of the sufferers, not a shriek of despair have met our ears. There was a fearfulness in that palpable darkness, which struck the most veteran heart with an awe akin to fear. When men can look abroad and see the real extent of the peril which surrounds them they can dare almost anything; but when surrounded by darkness their imaginations conjure up dangers in every strange intonation of the tempest, in every new outbreak of the surge. They tremble at what they cannot behold; in the language of the scripture “their joints are loosed with fear.” At length the fury of the squall began to subside, and the dark bank of clouds which had encircled us, undulated, rolled to and fro, and finally flew in ragged vapors away, flitting wildly past the stars that once more twinkled in the sky. As the prospect brightened, we looked eagerly around to see what damage the squall had occasioned. The fleet was scattered hither and thither over the horizon, torn, shattered, dismantled, powerless. Far up in the quarter from whence the hurricane had burst could be faintly seen the body of the convoy; but on every hand around some of the less fortunate ships were discoverable. Whether, however, most of the merchantmen had attempted to lie-to, or whether we had scudded before the gale with a velocity which none could rival, it was evident that we had passed away like a thunderbolt from the rest of the fleet, leaving them at a hopeless distance astern. Owing to the rapidity with which our canvass had been got in, we suffered no material injury; and, when the gale subsided and the wind came out again from the north, we lost no time in hauling up and getting the weather-gauge of the convoy. The ship was put once more in trim—the crew then turned in, and the watches were left in undisturbed possession of the decks. As I stood at my post and watched the bright stars overhead, shining placidly upon me, or listened to the cry of “All’s well!” passed from lookout to lookout across the deck, I could not help contrasting the peace and silence of the scene with the fearful uproar of the preceding hour. When morning dawned, not a vestige of the fleet remained on the southern seaboard. Our anxiety was now turned to the fate of the merchantman we had captured and that of the prize-crew we had thrown into her. But toward the afternoon watch, a sail was discovered on the horizon to windward, and when we had approached within a proper distance we recognized our prize. Our joy at rejoining may well be imagined.