“Stand by,” he called aloud, “to in all studding sails!  Down with them!” he added, scarcely giving his former words time to reach the ears of his subordinates.  “Down with every rag of them, fore and aft the ship!  Man the top-gallant clew-lines, Mr Earing.  Clew up, and clew down!  In with every thing, cheerily, men!  In!”

This was a language to which the crew of the “Caroline” were no strangers, and one which was doubly welcome; since the meanest seaman of them all had long thought that his unknown Commander had been heedlessly trifling with the safety of the vessel, by the hardy manner in which he disregarded the wild symptoms of the weather.  But they undervalued the keen-eyed vigilance of Wilder.  He had certainly driven the Bristol trader through the water at a rate she had never been known to have gone before; but, thus far, the facts themselves attested in his favour, since no injury was the consequence of what they deemed his temerity.  At the quick, sudden order just given, however, the whole ship was instantly in an uproar.  A dozen seamen called to each other, from different parts of the vessel each striving to lift his voice above the roaring ocean; and there was every appearance of a general and inextricable confusion; but the same authority which had aroused them, thus unexpectedly, into activity, produced order, from their ill-directed though vigorous efforts.

Wilder had spoken, to awaken the drowsy, and to excite the torpid.  The instant he found each man on the alert, he resumed his orders, with a calmness that gave a direction to the powers of all, but still with an energy that he well knew was called for by the occasion.  The enormous sheets of duck, which had looked like so many light clouds in the murky and threatening heavens, were soon seen fluttering wildly, as they descended from their high places; and, in a few minutes, the ship was reduced to the action of her more secure and heavier canvas.  To effect this object, every man in the ship had exerted his powers to the utmost, under the guidance of the steady but rapid mandates of their Commander.  Then followed a short and apprehensive breathing pause.  Every eye was turned towards the quarter where the ominous signs had been discovered; and each individual endeavoured to read their import, with an intelligence correspondent to the degree of skill he might have acquired, during his particular period of service, on that treacherous element which was now his home.

The dim tracery of the stranger’s form had been swallowed by the flood of misty light, which, by this time, rolled along the sea like drifting vapour, semi-pellucid, preternatural, and seemingly tangible.  The ocean itself appeared admonished that a quick and violent change was nigh.  The waves had ceased to break in their former foaming and brilliant crests, but black masses of the water were seen lifting their surly summits against the eastern horizon, no longer relieved