The fire had made swift work during the time the unfortunate crew were occupied in building the raft, and the little brig was now almost enveloped in smoke and flame. A burst of fire from her main hatchway threw a red glare over the turbulent waters, and showed the vessel's masts and rigging brightly displayed against the dark sky above and beyond them. The main-sail by this time caught fire, and was blazing away along the yard fiercely; and the flame soon reached the loftier sails and running rigging; the fire below was raging between decks, and rising in successive bursts of flame from the hatchways. The vessel had been filled with combustible material, and the doomed brig, in a short space of time, was one mass of flame. To a spectator beholding the sight in safety, it would have been a magnificent spectacle--the grandest, the most terrific, perhaps, it is possible to conceive--a ship on fire at night in the mid-ocean. The hull of the vessel lay flaming like an immense furnace on the surface of the deep; her masts, and the lower and topsail-yards, with fragments of the rigging hanging round them, sparkling, and scattering the fire-flakes, rose high above it, while huge volumes of smoke ever and anon obscured the whole, then borne away by the strong breeze, left the burning brig doubly distinct, placed in strong relief against the dark vault of heaven behind. The lofty spars, as their fastenings were burnt through, fell, one by one, into the hissing water, and at length the tall masts, no longer supported by the rigging, and nearly burnt into below the deck, fell over, one after the other, into the deep. Suddenly Captain Horton started to his feet, "It is, it is a sail--look, do you now see it coming up in the light of the brig?" "It is so, captain," responded his men one after the other. "Thank God we shall yet be saved! If the pirate had scuttled the ship we should have had no chance; but his cruel course has saved us, for the flame has attracted some vessel to our succor." "Perhaps the pirate returning," remarked Mr. Williams. "No, that kept on before the wind, and this is coming up. God grant it be an English vessel, and a swift one, and we may yet save your daughter!" This remark struck a chord of hope in the heart of Mr. Williams, and roused him to his native manliness. "But," said he, "our own vessel has drifted far from us, and we shall not be seen by this one." "I think they will come within hail; they will at least sail round the burning vessel, in the hopes of picking up somebody. Come, my men, let's make some kind of sail of our jackets, a half a mile nearer the ship may save us all our lives." With a cheer as merry as ever broke from their lips when on board ship, the reanimated sailors went to work, and soon reared a small sail made of their clothing, which caught enough wind to move them slowly onward. "Steer in the wake of our own vessel, my men, and the strange sail will come right on to us--get between them."