Wilder had spoken, to awaken the drowsy and to excite the torpid.  The instant he found each man on the alert, he resumed his orders with a calmness that gave a direction to the powers of all, and yet with an energy that he well knew was called for by the occasion.  The enormous sheets of duck, which had looked like so many light clouds in the murky and threatening heavens, were soon seen fluttering wildly, as they descended from their high places, and, in a few minutes, the ship was reduced to the action of her more secure and heavier canvas.  To effect this object, every man in the ship exerted his powers to the utmost, under the guidance of the steady but rapid mandates of their commander.  Then followed a short and apprehensive pause.  All eyes were turned towards the quarter where the ominous signs had been discovered; and each individual endeavored to read their import, with an intelligence correspondent to the degree of skill he might have acquired, during his particular period of service on that treacherous element which was now his home.

The dim tracery of the stranger’s form had been swallowed by the flood of misty light, which, by this time, rolled along the sea like drifting vapour, semi-pellucid, preternatural, and seemingly tangible.  The ocean itself appeared admonished that a quick and violent change was nigh.  The waves ceased to break in their former foaming and brilliant crests, and black masses of the water lifted their surly summits against the eastern horizon, no longer shedding their own peculiar and lucid atmosphere around them.  The breeze which had been so fresh, and which had even blown with a force that nearly amounted to a gale, was lulling and becoming uncertain, as it might be awed by the more violent power that was gathering along the borders of the sea, in the direction of the neighbouring continent.  Each moment, the eastern puffs of air lost their strength, becoming more and more feeble, until, in an incredibly short period, the heavy sails were heard flapping against the masts.  A frightful and ominous calm succeeded.  At this instant, a gleam flashed from the fearful obscurity of the ocean, and a roar, like that of a sudden burst of thunder, bellowed along the waters.  The seamen turned their startled looks on each other, standing aghast, as if a warning of what was to follow had come out of the heavens themselves.  But their calm and more sagacious commander put a different construction on the signal.  His lip curled, in high professional pride, and he muttered with scorn,—­

“Does he imagine that we sleep?  Ay, he has got it himself, and would open our eyes to what is coming?  What does he conjecture we have been about, since the middle watch was set?”

Wilder made a swift turn or two on the quarter-deck, turning his quick glances from one quarter of the heavens to another; from the black and lulling water on which his vessel was rolling, to the sails; and from his silent and profoundly expectant crew, to the dim lines of spars that were waving above his head, like so many pencils tracing their curvilinear and wanton images over the murky volumes of the superincumbent clouds.