His sense of guilt at this moment was overpowering; hitherto (partly occasioned by ignorance, and partly by depraved habits of life) a degree of thoughtlessness had possessed him, which it is almost impossible to conceive could reign in the breast of a being endued with reason. Now indeed his eyes were open to his fate--to his earthly fate; a strange foreboding came upon him; it was a species of instinctive horror; he could not look beyond it. Whether there was a being who ruled the world, or whether there was not, had never been the subject of his meditations; yet a secret whisper intimated to him that death would not be the bound of his hopes and his fears--of his joys and his sorrows. He was conscious of the blackness of his crime, which indeed was of the deepest dye, and that he had never till then experienced the arm of vengeance. He shuddered as the violence of the tempest increased. He had braved the seas--he had fought with the enemies of his country; but never did fear paralyze the daring Cedric before. He fell senseless on the deck entangled in the shattered cordage, whereby he was preserved from being washed overboard by the mountain billows, which every moment engulfed the vessel, threatening immediate destruction to all on board. The murkiest cloud that ever hid the skies from the view of man, now rode in universal blackness over the horror-stricken crew, which, opening every pore, as though at once to overwhelm creation, poured forth its contents like one vast sea descending to overflow another. The winds gathered from every quarter with unparalleled fury. Thunders rolled with that incessant clamour which pervades a field of earthly battle; but artillery, whose dreadful note hath made the hardiest and the boldest quake, utters with but feeble voice to that which that night growled on the craggy shores of India. And lightnings fell, as when Elijah called on heaven to answer him, and fire descended to proclaim the true Jehovah's name, and hail the one true prophet! The Levantine now struck with tremendous force against a rock, which lay concealed amidst the swelling waters, and instantaneously disappeared, leaving the wretched crew floating on the surface--borne on the billows! Cedric, by the tumultuous fury of the element, was thrown on a shelf of one of the steep rocks which form a natural barrier between the sea and land; being recovered from his stupor, he was again awake to the horrors that surrounded him; what had become of his comrades he knew not--he thought not. He clung to a fragment of the precipice with the desperation and firm grasp of madness--while every successive tide that rolled over his head became stronger and stronger.