At midnight (having previously been sleeping soundly, composed by the soporific effects of the dram, lulled by the music of the rising breeze, and the gentle undulations of the reeling vessel) he was flung several yards from his hammock, and received a contusion on the head, which for some time deprived him of his senses.  When he had somewhat recovered, the rocking of the vessel, the howling of the wind, and the creeking of the timbers, told him but too truly that the old man’s prophecy was being fulfilled.

He went hastily on deck, half dressed and nearly frantic through fear, to ascertain his opinion of the probable extent of the danger to which they were exposed.  But, alas! the old man, who had been placed at the helm as the only person capable of conducting the vessel in so perilous a situation, had been swept overboard by one of the early surges.  He spoke to many, but none seemed disposed to listen to him; each person being too much engaged with his own concerns to attend to those of others.

Every hand seemed paralyzed; the vessel without a steersman at the helm—­without a sailor to haul down a shroud, was cleaving the ocean at the mercy of the winds and the waves!

His sense of guilt at this moment was overpowering; hitherto (partly occasioned by ignorance, and partly by depraved habits of life) a degree of thoughtlessness had possessed him, which it is almost impossible to conceive could reign in the breast of a being endued with reason.  Now indeed his eyes were open to his fate—­to his earthly fate; a strange foreboding came upon him; it was a species of instinctive horror; he could not look beyond it.  Whether there was a being who ruled the world, or whether there was not, had never been the subject of his meditations; yet a secret whisper intimated to him that death would not be the bound of his hopes and his fears—­of his joys and his sorrows.

He was conscious of the blackness of his crime, which indeed was of the deepest dye, and that he had never till then experienced the arm of vengeance.  He shuddered as the violence of the tempest increased.

He had braved the seas—­he had fought with the enemies of his country; but never did fear paralyze the daring Cedric before.  He fell senseless on the deck entangled in the shattered cordage, whereby he was preserved from being washed overboard by the mountain billows, which every moment engulfed the vessel, threatening immediate destruction to all on board.

The murkiest cloud that ever hid the skies from the view of man, now rode in universal blackness over the horror-stricken crew, which, opening every pore, as though at once to overwhelm creation, poured forth its contents like one vast sea descending to overflow another.  The winds gathered from every quarter with unparalleled fury.  Thunders rolled with that incessant clamour which pervades a field of earthly battle; but artillery, whose dreadful note hath made the hardiest and the boldest quake, utters with but feeble voice to that which that night growled on the craggy shores of India.  And lightnings fell, as when Elijah called on heaven to answer him, and fire descended to proclaim the true Jehovah’s name, and hail the one true prophet!