“We must remain quiet here,” whispered Gonzalez, “until some movement be made on deck, in the noise of which we can lower the skiff undetected.” The wind was gradually freshening, and the ship began to plunge with the increasing swell. After a while the topgallant-sails were taken in, but it was an operation so quickly performed, that before the boat was lowered half the distance it was suspended from the water, the noise ceased, and they were obliged to hold on. In about half an hour after, which seemed to them an almost interminable space of time, they were cheered with the welcome order, “Man the main clew-garnets and buntlines,” preparatory to hauling up the mainsail. As the men ran away with the ropes, and clued and gathered the large and loudly flapping sail to the yard, Talbot and Gonzalez lowered the boat, and casting her loose, the ship passed by without any one observing them and was soon lost to view in the obscurity of the night. They had exchanged apprehended evils from human malignity for instant and appalling danger. The moon, struggling through a bank of clouds and shorn of her brilliancy by the opposing mist, cast her furtive beams upon the fretted sea. Instead of the prolonged and easy swell of the mid-ocean, the gulf, as if moved by adverse tides, whirled its waves about like some huge Briareus, tossing his hundred arms in the wildest and most furious contortions. The skiff was so light, so frail, and so difficult of trim, that they were every moment in danger of upsetting. The swell rapidly increased, and as they sunk into the trough of the sea, and shut out the faint horizon, the succeeding wave overshadowed, and its crest seemed to curl in anger above them. Sometimes a wave, like some monster rising from the deep, looked down black and threatening upon the tiny boat, and then rolling its seething foam along the sides, it rushed ahead, and gathering into a mass, seemed to await her coming. Thinly clad, and soon wet to the skin, as they rode upon the tops of the waves, they suffered bitterly from the coldness of the wind. In the hollow of the sea, they were sheltered one moment only to be more exposed the next. Sometimes riding upon the broken crest of a wave, they felt upon their bed of foam, as insignificant and far more helpless than the gulls which, disturbed in their slumber, screamed around them. The oars were of little service, save to steady the boat in the dreadful pitchings and careerings to which it was every instant subjected. One managed the oars, or sculls rather, while the other steered and occasionally bailed. There could be no transfer of labor, for it was certain death to attempt a change of position. Although the current set along the land, the wind and the heave of the sea, drove them indirectly toward it. After five hours incessant fatigue, cold, cramped and wearied to exhaustion, they reached the near vicinity of the shore, and running