Two other messengers, sent to take him away by force, met with no better success. The flames were ready to burst out on every side, and from each chink and crevice around the hatches--which had been replaced and barred down--the smoke was darting up with the force of vapour from a steam engine. The deck had become so heated that it was painful to stand upon it--the fire was fast progressing towards the run, where the magazine was situated. Thrice had the order been given to quit the burning vessel, but I could not forsake my friend without one more effort to rescue him from the terrible fate that awaited him, if left behind. He still held the loaded pistol in his hand and sternly forbade my approach. Poor Ponto had fainted from grief and loss of blood, and lay across his sister's body. I sprang forward and raised him in my arms, regardless of the maniac's threats. The pistol banged in my ear, but fortunately the ball passed over me as I stooped, and I regained the companion-way without injury. By this time, he had drawn another from his belt. "Put away the pistol, and come with me," I urged,--"the vessel is on fire and will soon be blown to atoms." He looked at me with a grim stare for a moment, then burst into an idiotic laugh. That wild laugh is still ringing in my brain. "Ha! ha! ha!--Fire? fire? here it is, wreathing and coiling!--here! here!" dashing his hand against his forehead. Perceiving that it was vain to reason with his madness, and fearing for the life of the wounded boy in my arms, I reluctantly left the hapless man to his fate. The boat had already put off for the last time, but I succeeded in prevailing upon them to return, and leaping in, soon reached the Dart in safety. The night set in wild and black as Death. Disparted and ragged masses of cloud were rushing over the face of the heavens, where once and again, the soaring moon, and that same bright, solitary star, would show their calm faces through the reeling rack, apparently flying from this scene of turmoil and death. The increasing wind howled mournfully through the rigging, and our battered hull staggered along the inky main writhing and shuddering on the heave of the surge like a weary, wounded thing. We followed in the track of the burning vessel as she fled along before the gale, awaiting in breathless suspense the consummation of her wild career. The black smoke, interfulgent with tortuous tongues of lurid fire, rolled in immense volumes over her!--the red flames darted up her masts, along the spars and rigging, and gushed in swirling sheets from her ports and bulwarks, while in their fierce gleams, the billows that ramped and raved about her, glowed like a huge seething cauldron of molten iron, and the gloomy clouds that lowered above were tinged in their ragged borders, as with blood. Occasionally the jarring thunder of her cannon, as they became heated to explosion, announced to us the progress of the insidious destroyer.