Pressing my hands to my head, I leaned over the stern, my face almost touching the water. A current of cooler air was stirring close to the surface, as if it were the breathing of the sea, for there was no wind. How preternaturally still every thing seemed--what an intensity of silence! How softly the pale moonlight rested upon the water! A grand and solemn repose wrapped the heavens and the ocean--no sound beneath all that vast blue dome--no motion, but the heaving of the long sluggish swell. Gradually I became calmer; the excitement and perturbation of my mind began to subside, and at length I felt as though I could sleep. As I resumed my place by the side of Browne, he moved, as if about to awake, and murmured indistinctly some broken sentences. From the words that escaped him, he was dreaming of that far-off home which he was to behold no more. In fancy he was wandering again by the banks of the Clyde, the scene of many a school-boy ramble. But it seemed as though the shadow of present realities darkened even his dreams, and he beheld these familiar haunts no longer in the joyous light of early days. "How strange it looks!" he muttered slowly, "how dark the river is--how deep and dark!--it seems to me it was not so _then_, Robert." Truly, companion in suffering, this is no falsely coloured dream of thine, for we have all come at last into deep and dark waters! CHAPTER TEN. A SAIL. THE CACHELOT AND HIS ASSAILANTS--THE COURSE--NEW ACQUAINTANCES. "Strange creatures round us sweep: Strange things come up to look at us, The monsters of the deep." The first thought that flashed through my mind with returning consciousness, in the morning, was, "This is the last day for hope-- unless relief comes to-day in some shape, we must perish." I was the first awake, and glancing at the faces of my companions lying about in the bottom of the boat, I could not help shuddering. They had a strange and unnatural look--a miserable expression of pain and weakness. All that was familiar and pleasant to look upon, had vanished from those sharpened and haggard features. Their closed eyes seemed singularly sunken; and their matted hair, sunburned skin, and soiled clothing, added something of wildness to the misery of their appearance.