A solitary individual, of them all, profited by the warning, and was seen gliding towards the deck with the velocity of the wind.  But rope parted after rope, and the fatal snapping of the wood instantly followed.  For a moment, the towering maze tottered, and seemed to wave towards every quarter of the heavens; and then, yielding to the movements of the hull, the whole fell, with a heavy crash, into the sea.  Each cord, lanyard, or stay snapped, when it received the strain of its new position, as though it had been made of thread, leaving the naked and despoiled hull of the “Caroline” to drive onward before the tempest, as if nothing had occurred to impede its progress.

A mute and eloquent pause succeeded this disaster It appeared as if the elements themselves were appeased by their work, and something like a momentary lull in the awful rushing of the winds might have been fancied.  Wilder sprang to the side of the vessel, and distinctly beheld the victims, who still clung to their frail support.  He even saw Earing waving his hand, in adieu, with a seaman’s heart, and like a man who not only felt how desperate was his situation, but one who knew how to meet his fate with resignation.  Then the wreck of spars, with all who clung to it, was swallowed up in the body of the frightful, preternatural-looking mist which extended on every side of them, from the ocean to the clouds.

“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.”