The deep breathing of the wind swept by them, but no human sound responded to his shout.  They had already fallen, between two seas, into a deep vale of water, where the narrow view extended no farther than the dark and rolling barriers on either side.

“Merciful Providence!” exclaimed the governess, “can there be others as unhappy as ourselves!”

“It was a boat, or my sight is not true as usual,” returned Wilder, still keeping his stand, to watch the moment when he might catch another view.  His wish was quickly realized.  He had trusted the helm, for the moment, to the hands of Cassandra, who suffered the launch to vary a little from its course.  The words were still on his lips, when the same black object came sweeping down the wave to windward, and a pinnace, bottom upwards, washed past them in the trough.  Then followed a shriek from the negress, who abandoned the tiller, and, sinking on her knees, hid her face in her hands.  Wilder instinctively caught the helm, as he bent his face in the direction whence the revolting eye of Cassandra had been turned.  A grim human form was seen, erect, and half exposed, advancing in the midst of the broken crest which was still covering the dark declivity to windward with foam.  For a moment, it stood with the brine dripping from the drenched locks, like some being that had issued from the deep to turn its frightful features on the spectators; and then the lifeless body of a drowned man drove past the launch, which, at the next minute, rose to the summit of the wave, to sink into another vale where no such terrifying object floated.

Not only Wilder, but Gertrude and Mrs Wyllys. had seen this startling spectacle so nigh them as to recognize the countenance of Nighthead, rendered still more stern and forbidding than ever, in the impression left by death.  But neither spoke, nor gave any other evidence of their intelligence.  Wilder hoped that his companions had at least escaped the shock of recognizing the victim; and the females themselves saw, in the hapless fortune of the mutineer too much of their own probable though more protracted fate, to be able to give vent to the horror each felt so deeply, in words.  For some time, the elements alone were heard sighing a sort of hoarse requiem over the victims of their conflict.

“The pinnace has filled!” Wilder at length observed, when he saw, by the pallid features and meaning eyes of his companions, it was in vain to affect reserve on the subject any longer.  “Their boat was frail, and loaded to the water’s edge.”

“Think you all are lost?” observed Mrs Wyllys, in a voice that scarcely amounted to a whisper.

“There is no hope for any!  Gladly would I part with an arm, for the assistance of the poorest of those misguided seamen, who have hurried on their evil fortune by their own disobedience and ignorance.”

“And, of all the happy and thoughtless human beings who lately left the harbour of Newport, in a vessel that has so long been the boast of mariners, we alone remain!”