The cloud, full of winds, dragging its tumour over the deep, cramped and eat more and more into the sea round the hooker.  Not a gull, not a sea-mew, nothing but snow.  The expanse of the field of waves was becoming contracted and terrible; only three or four gigantic ones were visible.

Now and then a tremendous flash of lightning of a red copper colour broke out behind the obscure superposition of the horizon and the zenith; that sudden release of vermilion flame revealed the horror of the clouds; that abrupt conflagration of the depths, to which for an instant the first tiers of clouds and the distant boundaries of the celestial chaos seemed to adhere, placed the abyss in perspective.  On this ground of fire the snow-flakes showed black—­they might have been compared to dark butterflies flying about in a furnace—­then all was extinguished.

The first explosion over, the squall, still pursuing the hooker, began to roar in thorough bass.  This phase of grumbling is a perilous diminution of uproar.  Nothing is so terrifying as this monologue of the storm.  This gloomy recitative appears to serve as a moment of rest to the mysterious combating forces, and indicates a species of patrol kept in the unknown.

The hooker held wildly on her course.  Her two mainsails especially were doing fearful work.  The sky and sea were as of ink with jets of foam running higher than the mast.  Every instant masses of water swept the deck like a deluge, and at each roll of the vessel the hawse-holes, now to starboard, now to larboard, became as so many open mouths vomiting back the foam into the sea.  The women had taken refuge in the cabin, but the men remained on deck; the blinding snow eddied round, the spitting surge mingled with it.  All was fury.

At that moment the chief of the band, standing abaft on the stern frames, holding on with one hand to the shrouds, and with the other taking off the kerchief he wore round his head and waving it in the light of the lantern, gay and arrogant, with pride in his face, and his hair in wild disorder, intoxicated by all the darkness, cried out,—­

“We are free!”

“Free, free, free,” echoed the fugitives, and the band, seizing hold of the rigging, rose up on deck.

“Hurrah!” shouted the chief.

And the band shouted in the storm,—­

“Hurrah!”

Just as this clamour was dying away in the tempest, a loud solemn voice rose from the other end of the vessel, saying,—­

“Silence!”

All turned their heads.  The darkness was thick, and the doctor was leaning against the mast so that he seemed part of it, and they could not see him.

The voice spoke again,—­

“Listen!”

All were silent.

Then did they distinctly hear through the darkness the toll of a bell.

CHAPTER IX.

THE CHARGE CONFIDED TO A RAGING SEA.