But the Dart was already lying on her beam-ends, heaving, groaning and quivering throughout every timber, in the fierce embrace of the tremendous blast! After its first overpowering shock, however, the gallant craft slowly recovered, and by dint of the strenuous exertions of our men, she was got before the gale. Away she sprang, like a frighted thing, over the tormented and whitening surges, completely shrouded in foam and spray. A dense cloud, murky as midnight, spread over the face of the heavens, where a moment before, naught met the gazer's eye, save the fleecy mackerel-clouds, drifting afar through its cerulean halls. The blue lightnings gleamed, the thunder boomed and rattled, the black billows shook their flashing manes, the whole firmament was in an uproar; and amid the wild rout, our little Dart, as a dry leaf in the autumn winds, was borne about, a very plaything in the eddying whirls of the frantic elements. The tempest was as short lived as it was sudden, and, as the schooner had sustained no material injury, directly after it had abated she was under sail again. When the rain cleared up in shore, every eye sought eagerly for the pirate craft. She had vanished! Nothing met our view but the tossing and tumbling surges, and the breaker-beaten coast. If ever old Satan West was taken aback, it was then. His brow darkened, and a shadow of unutterable disappointment passed over his countenance. "Gone!--By all that is mysterious and wonderful--gone!" he muttered to himself,--"escaped from my very grasp! Can there be truth in the wild tales told of her? No, no!--idiot to harbor the thought for a moment--she has foundered!" But this was hardly probable, as not the slightest vestige of her remained about the spot. Poor Percy, too, was the picture of despair. His hat had been blown away by the hurricane; and his hair tossed rudely in the wind, as he stood in the main-chains, gazing with the wildness of a maniac over the uproarous waters. "The lovers of the marvelous would here find enough to fatten upon, I ween," said Dacres, composedly helping himself to a quid of tobacco. "What think you is to come next? for I hardly think the play ends with actors and all being spirited away in a thunder gust!" I was interrupted in my reply by the energetic exclamations of the captain, who had been gazing seaward, over the quarter-rail. "Yes, by all the imps in purgatory, it is that devil-leagued pirate," burst from his lips; and at the same moment the cry of _Sail O!_ was heard from the forward watch.