Then commenced a scene of the wildest disorder amidst those desperate men; and even the captain himself, perceiving that they could laugh, and shout, and sing, in the delirium of intoxication, rushed from the side of Wagner and joined the rest. It was dreadful to hear the obscene jest, the ribald song, and the reckless execration, sent forth from the cabin, as if in answer to the awful voices in which Nature was then speaking to the world. But scarcely had a faint gleam appeared in the orient sky--not quite a gleam, but a mitigation of the intenseness of the night--when a tremendous wave--a colossus amongst giants--broke over the ill-fated ship, while a terrible crash of timber was for a moment heard in unison with the appalling din of the whelming billows. Wagner was the only soul on deck at that instant: but the fury of the waters tore him away from the bulwark to which he had been clinging, and he became insensible. When he awoke from the stupor into which he had been plunged, it was still dusk, and the roar of the ocean sounded in his ears with deafening din. But he was on land, though where he knew not. Rising from the sand on which he had been cast, he beheld the billows breaking on the shore at the distance of only a few paces; and he retreated further from their reach. Then he sat down, with his face toward the east, anxiously awaiting the appearance of the morn that he might ascertain the nature and the aspect of the land on which he had been cast. By degrees the glimmering which had already subdued the blackness of night into the less profound obscurity of duskiness, grew stronger; and a yellow luster, as of a far-distant conflagration, seemed to struggle against a thick fog. Then a faint roseate streak tinged the eastern horizon, growing gradually deeper in hue, and spreading higher and wider--the harbinger of sunrise; while, simultaneously, the features of the land on which Wagner was thrown began to develop themselves like specters stealing out of complete security; till at length the orient luster was caught successively by a thousand lofty pinnacles of rock; and finally the majestic orb itself appeared, lighting up a series of verdant plains, delicious groves, glittering lakes, pellucid streams, as well as the still turbulent ocean and the far-off mountains which had first peeped from amidst the darkness. Fair and delightful was the scene that thus developed itself to the eyes of Wagner; but as his glance swept the country which rose amphitheatrically from the shore not a vestige of the presence of man could be beheld. No smoke curled from amidst the groves, no church spire peeped from amongst the trees; nor had the wilderness of nature been disturbed by artificial culture. He turned toward the ocean; there was not a trace of his vessel to be seen. But further along the sand lay a dark object, which he approached, with a shudder, for he divined what it was.