“Lay the after-yards square!” he said, in a voice which was heard by every man on deck, though his words were apparently spoken but little above his breath.  The creaking of the blocks, as the spars came slowly and heavily round to the indicated position, contributed to the imposing character of the moment, sounding like notes of fearful preparation.

“Haul up the courses!” resumed Wilder with the same eloquent calmness of manner.  Then, taking another glance at the threatening horizon, he added slowly but with emphasis, “Furl them—­furl them both.  Away aloft, and hand your courses!” he continued in a shout; “roll them up, cheerily; in with them, boys, cheerily; in!”

The conscious seamen took their impulses from the tones of their commander.  In a moment, twenty dark forms were leaping up the rigging, with the alacrity of so many quadrupeds.  In another minute, the vast and powerful sheets of canvas were effectually rendered harmless, by securing them in tight rolls to their respective spars.  The men descended as swiftly as they had mounted to the yards; and then succeeded another breathing pause.  At this appalling moment, a candle would have sent its flame perpendicularly towards the heavens.  The ship, missing the steadying power of the wind, rolled heavily in the troughs of the seas, which began to lessen at each instant, as if the startled element was recalling into the security of its own vast bosom that portion of its particles which had so lately been permitted to gambol madly over its surface.  The water washed sullenly along the side of the ship, or, as she labouring rose from one of her frequent falls into the hollows of the waves, it shot back into the ocean from her decks in glittering cascades.  Every hue of the heavens, every sound of the element, and each dusky and anxious countenance, helped to proclaim the intense interest of the moment.  In this brief interval of expectation and inactivity, the mates again approached their commander.

“It is an awful night, Captain Wilder!” said Earing, presuming on his rank to be the first to speak.

“I have known far less notice given of a shift of wind,” was the answer.

“We have had time to gather in our kites, ’tis true, sir; but there are signs and warnings that come with this change which the oldest seaman must dread!”

“Yes,” continued Knighthead, in a voice that sounded hoarse and powerful, even amid the fearful accessories of that scene; “yes, it is no trifling commission that can call people that I shall not name out upon the water in such a night as this.  It was in just such weather that I saw the Vesuvius ketch go to a place so deep, that her own mortar would not have been able to have sent a bomb into the open air, had hands and fire been there fit to let it off!”

“Ay; and it was in such a time that the Greenlandman was cast upon the Orkneys, in as flat a calm as ever lay on the sea.”