We held our breath for the second that ensued. So close had the ship approached that I could have pitched a biscuit on her decks. Her bowsprit already threatened to come into collision with our bows, and involuntarily I grasped a rope, expecting the next instant to be at the mercy of the waves. On—on—she came, her huge hull, as it rose on the wave, fearfully overtopping our own, and threatening, at the first shock, to crush us. A second and wilder cry of agony burst from every lip, but, at that instant, she swerved, what seemed a hair’s breadth, to one side, her bowsprit grazed ours in passing, and she whirled by like a bird on the wing. The scene did not occupy a minute. So sudden had been the appearance of the ship, so imminent had been our peril, and so rapidly had the moment of danger come and gone, that the whole occurrence seemed to me like a dream; and when, after a second’s delay, the ill-fated ship passed away into the darkness under our lee, and the shrieks of her crew were lost in the uproar of the gale, I almost doubted whether what we had just beheld had been real. But a glance at the faces of my messmates dissipated my incredulity, for on every countenance was written the history of the few last moments of agonizing suspense. A profound silence, meanwhile, reigned on our decks, every eye being strained after the drowning man-of-war. At length Merrivale spoke. “It is a miracle how we escaped,” and then in a sadder tone he added, “the Lord have mercy on all on board yonder ship. But hark!” he suddenly exclaimed, and a wild, thrilling cry, as if a hundred voices had united in a shriek of agony, struggled up from leeward. Years have passed since then, and the hair that was once fair has now turned to gray, but that awful sound yet rings in my ears; and often since have I started from my sleep, fancying that I saw again that spectral ship flitting by through the gloom, or heard that cry of agony drowning, for the moment, the raging tempest. Our blood curdled at the sound, and we gazed into each other’s faces with horror on every line of countenance. More than a minute elapsed before a word was said; and, during the interval, we sought to catch a repetition of the cry, however faint; but only the singing of the sleet through the hamper, the whistle of the hurricane overhead, and the wild roar of the breakers under our lee, came to our ears. No further token of that ill-fated ship ever reached us. Not a living soul, of the hundreds who had crowded her deck when she whirled across our course, landed on that coast. With all their sins on their heads, afar from those they loved and by whom they were loved in return, her crew went down into the deep, “unknelled, uncoffined and unknown.” When that wintry storm had passed away, the timbers of a wreck were found strewing the inhospitable shore, with here and there a dead body clinging to a fragment of a spar, but neither man nor child survived to