I did so. Crash--the schooner struck. Her foremast bent forward like a willow wand, the cordage and blocks rattling, and then went over the bows like a shot. The next sea broke over her in smoke, and hove her broadside on upon the reef--another shock, and the mainmast was lumbering and rasping over the sides. She now fell off with her broadside to the sea, which was making a fair breach over her; and while the cries of the unfortunates aboard of her rent the air, and it was clear she must instantly go to pieces, we all at once slid out of the infernal turmoil of dashing waves--"the hell of waters"--and rose buoyantly on the long smooth swell, that was rolling in from the offing. For a minute before not a word had been spoken by officers or men, all hands being riveted to the deck, looking out, and expecting every instant to see the vessel under foot driven into staves; but now, as each man drew a long breath, old Davie, with most unlooked-for agility, gave a _spang_ into the air; and while he _skiffed_ his old hat over the mast-head, as an offering to Neptune, the gallant little Midge bent to the freshening blast, like a racehorse laying himself to his work, and once more bounded exultingly "o'er the glad waters of the dark blue sea," as if the sweet little craft had been instinct with life, and conscious that she had once more regained her own proper element--the cloven water roaring at her bows, as the stem tore through it, like a trenchant ploughshare; and dashing it right and left into smoke, until it rushed past us in a white sheet of buzzing water, that spun away in a long straight wake astern; in the small yeasty _swirls_ of which the moon and stars sparkled diamond-like, but of many hues, as if the surface of the ever-restless ocean had been covered with floating prisms.--"Hurrah--hurrah--we are once more in blue water!"[1] [1]Some weeks after the preceding chapters appeared in Blackwood, the following accounts of poor Lander's untimely fate reached England--melancholy vouchers for the truth of the descriptions contained in them:-- MURDER OF RICHARD LANDER. (_Official Despatch._) "SIR,--Admiral Warren having mentioned to me your wish, that any intelligence respecting the expedition on this coast might be addressed to you privately, I take the advantage of this communication to state, that on my arrival here this day from the Cape and Sierra Leone, I found Mr Lander had died on the 2d instant of a wound in the thigh.