For half an hour the storm continued in its fury. At the end of that time the intense darkness began to give way; but it was nearly half an hour more before the squall had entirely passed over us. At last the rain ceased, the clouds began to break, and the wind in part subsided. I now ventured, for the first time since the tempest had burst upon us, to rise up and look around. I was anxious to see what had become of the remaining boats, as well as to learn in what direction our ship was; for the schooner, I had no doubt from the speed with which I saw her going last, was hull down on the horizon by this time. Eagerly I scanned the prospect, therefore. My first object of search was the ship, for I knew that on her depended our safety. Her greater size had placed her, I reasoned, even more at the power of the gale than ourselves, and consequently I looked for her to be in advance of us considerably. I had fancied, indeed, during the height of the hurricane, that I saw her tall masts, for a single instant, shooting, meteor-like, past us: but in the blinding rain that then closed in the prospect, it was easy, I was sure, to be deceived. My search, however, for her was unsuccessful. Nowhere, on the whole horizon, was she or the schooner to be seen. Up to windward, where it was now entirely clear, the view was unbroken; and she was plainly not there. In front, for a long distance, the prospect was equally unbroken; but she was not in sight in this direction either. Far down, however, in the furthest horizon, where the squall was disappearing, there still hung a black cloud, from which the sullen thunder occasionally growled, and across whose gloomy front the lightning, every few minutes, crinkled. That dark curtain, I knew, enveloped our missing ship, or else she, and her three hundred souls, were buried in the deep. With a heavy sigh I beheld this condition of affairs. Parted from the ship, without water or provisions on board, destitute even of a compass, and with night coming on, our situation was indeed piteous in the extreme. How far the squall might carry the ship before outrunning her, it was impossible to conjecture. Perhaps, when the hurricane should be over for our comrades on board, the gallant craft might be hull down on the horizon. In that event, though she would naturally retrace her path to seek us, night might shut in before we could be seen from the mast-head even: and, in the darkness that would follow, nothing could be easier than for her entirely to miss us. Days, in that event, would probably elapse before we would be picked up, if ever. The thought was terrible, and I turned from it, sick at heart, to look for the other boats.