Not the slightest chance for harbor or anchorage could be discovered along the whole iron-bound coast, yet the gallant little Sea-sprite held steadily on her course, steering broad for the base of the mountains. "Why, in the name of madness, is the fellow driving in among the breakers?" muttered our captain;--"Thinks he to escape by running into danger? By Mars, and if I mistake not, he shall have peril to his heart's content, ere nightfall!" But fate willed that we should be disappointed; for just as every thing had been arranged to treat the bucaneer with a fist full of grape and canister, one of those sudden tempests, so common to the West Indies in the autumn months, was upon us. A vast, black, conglomerated volume of vapor swung against the mountain summits, and curled heavily down over the cliffs. Brilliant scintillations were darting from its shadowy borders, and the zigzag lightnings were playing about it, and licking its ragged folds like the tongues of an evil spirit! Suddenly it burst asunder, and a burning gleam--a wide conflagration, as if the very earth had exploded--flashed over the hills, accompanied with a peal of thunder that made the broad ocean tremble, and our deck quiver under us, like a harpooned grampus in his death gasp! The electric fluid upheaved and hurled to fragments an immense peak near the summit of the mountains, and huge masses of rock, with thunderous din, and amid clouds of dust, smoke and fire, came bounding and racing down from crag to crag, uprooting the tall cedars, and dashing to splinters the firm iron-wood trees, as though they had been but reeds--sweeping a wide path of ruin through the thick forests, and shivering to atoms and dust the loose rocks that obstructed their career, till, with a whirring bound, they plunged from a beetling cliff into the sea, causing the tortured water to send up a cloud of mist and spray. All on board were struck aghast at the blinding brilliancy of the flash and its terrible effects. We were aroused to a sense of our situation, by the clear, sonorous voice of Satan West, whom nothing pertaining to earth could daunt, calling all hands to take in sail. Instantly the trade-wind ceased, and a fearful, death-like silence ensued. This was of short duration; hardly were our sails stowed close, when we saw the trees on shore drawn upwards, twisted off and rent to pieces, while a dense mass of leaves and broken branches whirled over the land; and a wild, deep, wailing sound, as of rushing wings, filled the air, foretelling the onset of the whirlwind. "The hurricane is upon us!--helm hard aweather!" thundered the captain.