Clara, forgetting her sickness, was delighted, and amused her husband by the incessant questions she put to him about every thing she saw. All day she remained on deck, and until a late hour in the evening; then with a lingering look at the bright stars, and the wide expanse of water that, alive with phosphorescent matter, seemed on fire, she reluctantly went below; but soon was dreaming of the glorious sublimity and beauty of all she had seen, nearly all the night, as the day had thus passed pleasantly by, when, toward morning, she was awakened by hoarse noises on deck, overhead, and found the ship rolling and pitching violently. Her husband she saw had left the cabin; and, alarmed, she hastily dressed, and started after him, to see what had happened; but she got no further than the top of the companion-way. Terrified, she clung to the railing, and with her body on the steps, and her head just above the level of the deck, with dilated pupils she gazed upon the awful change that had come over the face of the fickle deep in a few short hours. Instead of the long, unbroken, rolling waves she had left, she now found the surface of the ocean a mass of foam; huge, giant billows, as if in sport, chased each other with fearful rapidity, lifting the brig, now apparently as if they would carry her up into the low, dark, leaden-looking clouds, that seemed not much higher than her masts, and then, as they ran from under her, would leave her to sink between two hills of living water, as if to the bottomless pit, until another would pick up the brig, as a child’s plaything, and hurling her on, away she would go again, up, up, for awhile, only to sink into another yawning valley, pitching, rolling, struggling, creaking, she held her way; and Clara’s natural pride and self possession in a short time enabled her to look calmly around, and even to admire, the fearful scene. The brig, she saw, was under nothing but her top-sails, close reefed; and a small storm stay-sail; and her husband coming to her, said that a heavy wind had come out from the northward and westward about twelve o’clock, and had been increasing ever since, and was still rising, and that though he was now able to hold his course, he did not think he could much longer, and insisted upon Clara’s going below. Well it was that she did; for scarcely had she left the deck, when a blast, stronger and fiercer than any they had felt, struck the Scorpion, and bore her almost on her beam-ends. Struggling, she nearly righted herself, but again the ruthless wind compelled her to bow to its power, and a tremendous wave striking her at the same time, she was laid over completely. Captain De Vere had been expecting such a catastrophe; and as soon as he found his vessel was on her beam-ends, and could not again right herself, gave the order to “Cut away the masts!”