"I think I can see him now as he stood then, with his feet firmly planted on the quarterdeck grating, his hands on the spokes of the wheel, and the livid lightning seeming to play about him, as the brig flew on through the storm and the darkness, and with every varying flash his features changed in hue. Now they were green, and anon red or blue; now purple, and then ghastly white; ever and again, as the lightning flashed forth, this infernal face came out of the gloom with a diabolical grotesqueness, and a strange smile on it that appalled us all; and now another day began to break. "’Mate, that fellow is more like a devil than a human being,’ whispered Bob Jenner to me, echoing my own thoughts, as we clung together to the belaying pins abaft the mainmast. "He spoke in a low whisper; but in an instant the eyes of Urbain were on him. "’Ah!’ said he, showing his serrated teeth, ’a _maladroit_ speech, messmate.’ "’No messmate of yours,’ growled Bob, unwisely. "’Shipmate, then,’ suggested the other, with a strange glance, between a grin and a scowl, for his black, glittering eyes wore one expression, and his cruel mouth another. "’Well, mayhap, for so it must be,’ said Bob, bluntly. "’Ah,’ said Urbain, with his horrible smile, as he held the wheel with one hand, and—even at that terrible time—felt for his sheath-knife with the other; ’ah! you think me a _mauvais sujet_, do you?" "’I doesn’t know what "mavy suggey" may be, and I doesn’t care if I never does,’ replied Bob, sturdily; ’but once I catches you ashore, mounseer, I’ll teach you not to grip your knife when speaking to me.’ "’No quarrelling, lads,’ said I, while my teeth chattered in the cold of that awful morning atmosphere. ’I only wish we were ashore.’ "’Then have your wish. Land ho!’ sung out Urbain; and at that moment the grey wrack around us parted like a curtain; there was a dreadful crash, which tumbled us all right and left; the breakers which he had seen ahead were now boiling around us; and the brig lay bulged and broken-backed upon a reef, close to a lofty line of rocky coast, a helpless wreck, with the ice closing round her; and with a sound between an oath and a laugh, Urbain quitted the now useless wheel, which oscillated, as if in mockery, to and fro. "Captain Benson, who, worn out by toil, had been snatching a few minutes’ repose under the hood of the companionway, now sprang on deck, to find the brig totally lost, and that for us there was no resource, if we would save our lives, but to abandon her and get on shore. "Broken and bulged, she was too firmly wedged on the reef for us ever to have the slightest hope of getting her off, save to sink her in deep water. As yet she might hold together for some hours, if the fury of the storm abated, and there were evident signs of such being the case.