On her flush deck, and lashed to the helm, with the breaking waves dashing around his feet, and the water dripping from the close cap and tightly-buttoned pea-jacket in which he was garbed, stood her gallant master, in the performance of a duty which he, true to his responsibility, would intrust to no other, in such an hour as this,--that of guiding his storm-tossed bark among the frightful billows that were threatening every instant, to engulf her. Thus swiftly onward drove the seemingly devoted ship, strained, shivering, and groaning beneath the terrible power of the gale, like an over-ridden steed, as she dashed, yet unharmed, through the mist and spray and constantly-breaking white caps of the wildly-rolling deep; thus onward sped she, for the full space of two hours, when the wind gradually lulled, and with it the deafening uproar subsided. Presently a young, well-dressed gentleman made his appearance on deck, amidships, and, having noted a while the now evident subsidence of the tempest, slowly and carefully, from one grasped rope to another, made his way to the side of the captain, at the wheel. “A frightful blow, Mr. Elwood,” said the latter; “for the twenty years I have been a seaman, I have never seen the like.” “It certainly has exceeded all my conceptions of a sea-storm,” said the other. “But do you know where we are, and where driving at this tremendous speed?” “Yes, I think I do, both. When we were struck by the gale, which I saw was going to be a terrible norther, and saw it, too, very luckily, at a distance that enabled me to become well prepared for it, look at my reckoning, and make all my calculations,--when we were struck, we were three hundred and fifty miles out of Havana, north’ard, and about forty from the American coast. I at once put the ship before the wind, and set her course southeast, which, being perfectly familiar with these seas, I knew would give her a safe run, and, in about sixty miles, carry her by the southern point of the Little Bahama Bank, where, rounding this great breakwater against northers, we should be in a comparatively smooth sea, that would admit of either laying to or anchoring. It is now over two hours since we started on this fearful race, which has kept my heart in my mouth the whole time; and I am expecting, every minute, to get sight of that rocky headland.” “But that,” rejoined Elwood (for the gentleman was no other than Claud Elwood, as the reader has doubtless already inferred), “that will bring us, according to the late rumor, into one of the principal haunts of the pirates, will it not?”