“Stand by, to clear away a boat!” shouted Wilder, without pausing to think of the impossibility of one’s swimming, or of effecting the least good, in so violent a tornado. But the amazed and confounded seamen who remained needed not instruction in this matter. No man moved, nor was the smallest symptom of obedience given. The mariners looked wildly around them, each endeavouring to trace, in the dusky countenance of the other, his opinion of the extent of the evil; but not a mouth was opened among them all. “It is too late—it is too late!” murmured Wilder to himself; “human skill and human efforts could not save them!” “Sail, ho!” Nighthead muttered at his elbow, in a voice that teemed with a species of superstitious awe. “Let him come on,” returned his young Commander bitterly; “the mischief is ready finished to his hands!” “Should yon be a mortal ship, it is our duty to the owners and the passengers to speak her, if a man can make his voice heard in this tempest,” the second mate continued, pointing, through the haze at the dim object that was certainly at hand. “Speak her!—passengers!” muttered Wilder, involuntarily repeating his words. “No; any thing is better than speaking her. Do you see the vessel that is driving down upon us so fast?” he sternly demanded of the watchful seaman who still clung to the wheel of the “Caroline.” “Ay, ay, sir,” was the brief, professional reply. “Give her a birth—sheer away hard to port—perhaps he may pass us in the gloom, now we are no higher than our decks. Give the ship a broad sheer, I say, sir.” The same laconic answer as before was given and, for a few moments, the Bristol trader was seen diverging a little from the line in which the other approached; but a second glance assured Wilder that the attempt was useless. The strange ship (and every man on board felt certain it was the same that had so long been seen hanging in the north-western horizon) came on, through the mist, with a swiftness that nearly equalled the velocity of the tempestuous winds themselves. Not a thread of canvas was seen on board her. Each line of spars, even to the tapering and delicate top-gallant-masts, was in its place, preserving the beauty and symmetry of the whole fabric; but nowhere was the smallest fragment of a sail opened to the gale. Under her bows rolled a volume of foam, that was even discernible amid the universal agitation of the ocean; and, as she came within sound, the sullen roar of the water might have been likened to the noise of a cascade. At first, the spectators on the decks of the “Caroline” believed they were not seen, and some of the men called madly for lights, in order that the disasters of the night might not terminate in the dreaded encounter. “No!” exclaimed Wilder; “too many see us there already!” “No, no,” muttered Nighthead; “no fear but we are seen; and by such eyes, too, as never yet looked out of mortal head!”