But the white squall, which had in no way affected us (so small and partial was the sphere of its influence), had sufficed to separate ours irretrievably from our companion-raft, and the squadron of boats that had promised not to forsake us.  And now the eye of agony was strained in vain over the weltering waste, for a vestige of those refugees from the Kosciusko—­buried, perhaps, a thousand fathoms deep, by their sudden visitors, beneath the waves of that deadly Atlantic sea.

Tears rained over my face as I thought of this probability, and, hopeless as I was of rescue, the almost certain fate of my companion-voyagers fell over me like a pall.  “Better, perhaps—­far better had it been”—­I thought so then—­“had we all perished together in that terrific sheet of flame that rose up like a dividing barrier between us at the last.  Fit emblem of the final day of doom.  Our trials were but begun.  What more remained?  God in heaven only knew!”

And rapidly, and in panoramic succession, all the fearful adventures of raft and boat that I had ever read of, or heard related, passed across my mind, ending with that latest, and perhaps the most fearful of all—­the wreck of the Medusa!

The night came down serene and beautiful.  As the sun disappeared in ocean, up rose the full-orbed moon—­crimson and magnified by surrounding vapors—­that to the practised eye portended future tempest, calm as the ocean and the heavens then seemed.

The constellations, singularly distinct and splendid, had the power to fix and fascinate my vision—­never felt before—­as they shone above me, clear and crystalline as enthroned in space—­judges, and spectators, cold and pitiless as it seemed to me, in the strangeness and forlornness of my condition—­Arcturus, and the Ursas, great and little, and Lyra, and the Corona Borealis, Berenice, and Hydra, and Cassiopea’s chair; these and many more.  I marked them all with a calm scrutiny that belongs to terror in some phases.  The stars seemed mocking eyes that night—­smiling and safe in heaven—­the moon, a cold and cruel enemy with her vapory train, so grandly sailing across the cloudless heaven—­so careless of our fate—­the wreck of a ruined world as many deem her—­veiling in light her inward desolation.

A faint and vapory comet lurked on the horizon—­like a ghastly messenger—­scarcely discernible to the human eyes, yet vaguely ominous and suggestive—­a spirit-ship it might be—­watching in silence to bear away the souls of those lost at sea!

There was deep stillness—­unbroken, save by the lapping and plashing waters.  Even the crooning hymns of the old negro woman had died away; and the moans of the suffering child, and the sobs of the weary mother, and the eager exclamations of Ada Greene (for such I learned was the name of my young companion), were, for a season, lost alike in sleep.

Food had been distributed—­prayer had been offered—­all seemed favorable so far to our preservation.  We were on the track of voyage—­the pathway of ships—­and the sea was tranquil as a summer lake; up to this point, the arm of God had been extended over us almost visibly.  Would He forsake us now?  I questioned thus, and yet I could not, dare not, hope as others hoped!