_Watching with pallid Faces.--The Torso of Corbet.--A sudden and unaccountable Break in the Proceedings.--Great Reaction.--Unpleasant Discovery.--Pat and the salt Water.--The Rheu-matiz and kindred Diseases.--Where to go.--Where are we?--Sable Island.--Anticosti, Bermuda, Jamaica, Newfoundland, Cape Cod, or Owld Ireland.--A land Breeze.--Sounding for the Land.--Land ahead._ PAINFUL thing it was to see the Antelope thus sinking into the sea; to view the waters thus rolling over her familiar form from bows to stern; to see the boiling foam of the ingulfing billows; but how much more terrible it was to see the sacrifice of a human life; the voluntary self-destruction of a human being, and of one, too, who had been their guide, their revered and beloved friend! They had no cause for self-reproach. They had done all that they could. His own will had brought him to this. Still the spectacle was no less terrible to all of them, and there was no less anguish in their souls as they saw him,--the meek, the gentle, the venerable Corbet,--thus descending, by his own free will, and by his own act, into the dark abyss of this unknown sea. And so they watched with pallid faces, and with angonized hearts for the end. The ancient mariner sank down, as has been said, with his sinking schooner, and his feet were overwhelmed by the rushing flood, and his ankles, and his knees, and his thighs, and at length he stood there with the waters about his waist, and his mild eyes fixed upon vacancy. Another moment, and they expected to see that venerable and beloved form disappear forever from their gaze. But that venerable form did not, in fact, disappear. [Illustration: 0293] That venerable form remained stationary,--the waters reaching as far as the waist: thus far, but no farther. The lower half had disappeared beneath the sea, but the upper half still remained to bless and cheer their eyes. Corbet still lived! But it was what an artist might call a Torso of Corbet. Corbet thus had sunk into the unfathomable depth of ocean up to his waist, but after that he sank no more. Higher than that the waters did not rise. He stood in that rigid attitude already described, grasping the tiller, and thus steadying himself,--upright, firm as a rock, and so he stood after the waters had risen to his waist. The hull of the Antelope had disappeared. But still her masts and rigging rose above the waters, and above the head of Corbet, and these sank no farther, but remained at the same height above the sea.