“Stand firm to the mess-chest!” half-whispered the Skimmer, motioning to his companions to place themselves in attitudes to support the weaker of their party, while, with sedulous care, he braced his own athletic person in a manner to throw all of its weight and strength against the seat.  “Stand firm, and be ready!”

Ludlow complied, though his eye scarce changed its direction.  He saw the bright flame that was rising above the arm-chest, and he fancied that it came from the funeral pile of the young Dumont, whose fate, at that moment, he was almost disposed to envy.  Then his look returned to the grim countenance of Trysail.  At moments, it seemed as if the dead master spoke; and so strong did the illusion become, that our young sailor more than once bent forward to listen.  While under this delusion, the body rose, with the arms stretched upwards.  The air was filled with a sheet of streaming fire, while the ocean and the heavens glowed with one glare of intense and fiery red.  Notwithstanding the precaution of the ’Skimmer of the Seas,’ the chest was driven from its place, and those by whom it was held were nearly precipitated into the water.  A deep, heavy detonation proceeded as it were from the bosom of the sea, which, while it wounded the ear less than the sharp explosion that had just before issued from the gun, was audible at the distant capes of the Delaware.  The body of Trysail sailed upward for fifty fathoms, in the centre of a flood of flame, and, describing a short curve, it came towards the raft, and cut the water within reach of the captain’s arm.  A sullen plunge of a gun followed, and proclaimed the tremendous power of the explosion; while a ponderous yard fell athwart a part of the raft, sweeping away the four petty officers of Ludlow, as if they had been dust driving before a gale.  To increase the wild and fearful grandeur of the dissolution of the royal cruiser, one of the cannon emitted its fiery contents while sailing in the void.

The burning spars, the falling fragments, the blazing and scattered canvas and cordage, the glowing shot, and all the torn particles of the ship, were seen descending.  Then followed the gurgling of water, as the ocean swallowed all that remained of the cruiser which had so long been the pride of the American seas.  The fiery glow disappeared, and a gloom like that which succeeds the glare of vivid lightning, fell on the scene.

Chapter XXXIII.

    “—­Please you, read.”

    Cymbeline.

“It is past!” said the ‘Skimmer of the Seas,’ raising himself from the attitude of great muscular exertion, which he had assumed in order to support the mess-chest, and walking out along the single mast, towards the spot whence the four seamen of Ludlow had just been swept.  “It is past! and those who are called to the last account, have met their fate in such a scene as none but a seaman may witness; while those who are spared, have need of all a seaman’s skill and resolution for that which remains!  Captain Ludlow, I do not despair; for, see, the lady of the brigantine has still a smile for her servitors!”