“O, Selim! must we perish?” whispered his young and lovely Zillah.

“Dearest, I trust we may yet be saved.  The gale will ere long subside, and even now we are drifting towards the very coast that we should have steered for had all been well with us.”

This was so.  The clipper, though gradually settling deeper and deeper into the sea, was yet propelled before the breeze by all the canvass that it was deemed prudent to place upon her, right towards the Circassian coast, at a rate perhaps of from four to five knots.  The gale, too, now gradually subsided, and enabled the half-wrecked people to take more comfortable positions, and Aphiz and Selim to prepare a raft with the assistance of the crew, for it was but too apparent that the schooner must go down before long.  Hollow groaning sounds issued from the hatches as she settled lower and lower, and it really seemed as though the fabric was uttering exclamations of pain at its untimely fate.

By unbinding and loosing the fore and main yards, a foundation was made by lashing these spars together, upon which other timbers and wood work was fastened, and in a few hours a broad and comparatively comfortable raft was formed.  But how to launch it?  That was beyond the power of all those on board united.  To wait until the time when the water should float it from the deck, would be to run the risk of being engulfed with the schooner, and being drawn into the vortex of water that would follow her going down, and thus meet a sure and swift destruction.

But this was now their only hope, and the only means offering itself for their escape, since the stern and quarter boats had been lost or stove in the course of the late gale, and so making a virtue of necessity, they all gathered upon the centre of the raft that had been thus hastily constructed, and awaited their fate.  Aphiz and Selim bound their respective charges to the raft by cords about their bodies, to prevent the possibility of their being washed from its unprotected flooring.

Already the water washed over their very feet, and now and then the schooner gave a fearful lurch, that caused all hands to stand fast and believe her going down.  Gradually the water crept higher and higher, and the plunging schooner seemed at every fall of her bows to be going down.  Even the gentle Komel and Zillah could understand the fearful momentary danger that must ensue when the hull should plunge at last, and they silently held each other’s hands.

“Hurrah! hurrah!” cried one of the crew, at the top of his voice.

“What now?” demanded Selim sternly of the man, at his seemingly untimely mirth.

“She floats, she floats—­the raft’s afloat.”

“Then in the name of Heaven, shove off as quickly as possible,” said Selim, as he and Aphiz seize each an oar and strove to force the raft away from the deck.  A way had already been cut through the bulwarks.