I walked the deck till evening, and with departing light of day distinguished St Michael's Mount, rising in a grey and purple haze high into the ruddy horizon. The night fell chilly and thick, and I went into the cabin and tried to make up my mind for the worst. But I could not long bear to stay there, it was so lonely and dismal. There was a sort of company in the wind and the struggling sails on deck, but below, everything was deadly dark and silent. So, chilly as it was, I wrapped my cloak of canvass once more about me, and sat down on the forecastle, shivering with cold and apprehension, and gazing, till my eyes grew strained and dizzy, into the monotonous gloom ahead. I could not see any star, but I think it must have been about one o'clock, when the heavy washing of the seas about our bows was broken by the distant murmur of breakers. Had I heard my death-bell tolling, it could not more surely have impressed me with the certainty of my immediate fate; and yet the very growling of that merciless band, into whose strangling tumult I so soon expected to be cast, came upon my numbed senses with a rousing and invigorating influence; for the dull uncertainty of my former state had been altogether stupifying. I rose and took my post once more by the wheel, determined to use my experience to the best advantage in counteracting or seconding the wind as I saw necessary, so far as its very limited command would go. The tumult of broken water now became louder and louder, but instead of advancing on my ear as before, out of the darkness ahead, it growled away down the night on our starboard beam in an oblique direction, which I could not account for, till, looking over the stern, I saw, by the dim glimmer of the ship's wake, that we were making more lee than head way; that, in fact, the ship was driving broadside on, in a powerful tide-race along a reef of rocks, through some opening in which, or past which altogether, I did not despair of being yet carried by the current, as I heard no surf loud enough to tell of its running anywhere against them, except beyond one breach in their line, comparatively smooth. The coast was now distinguishable ahead, black, high, and precipitous. It advanced higher and higher up the sky, till it almost seemed to overhang our forecastle, and I now felt the ship swing round in the sweep of the current, and saw the breakers running white astern as we swept clear of them, right through the reef. There rose presently a rustling sound about the bows; then a heavy grating all along the keel, a dull prolonged concussion, and the tide broke on her as she stuck--fast in a sand-bank. It was pitch dark. The breakers were on all sides; but the ship lay in smooth water among them. It would have been madness to attempt swimming on shore; where, even if I should escape the violence of the current and surf, I must spend the long morning on the bleak hill, weighed down by wet clothes, and ignorant of my road. Under these