been in the trough, while he was thus on the summit of the waves, or it might be that it floated so low as to be totally lost to the view of one whose head was scarcely above the surface of the water.  For a single instant, the young man felt a chill at his heart, as he fancied that the wreck had already sunk; but it passed away when he recalled the slow progress by which the air escaped, and he saw the certainty that the catastrophe, however inevitable, could not yet have really arrived.  He waited for another swell to lift him on its summit, when, by “treading water,” he raised his head and shoulders fairly above the surface of the sea, and strained his eyes in another vain effort to catch a glimpse of the wreck.  He could not see it.  In point of fact, the mate had swum much further than he had supposed, and was already so distant as to render any such attempt hopeless.  He was fully a third of a mile distant from the point of his departure.

Disappointed, and in a slight degree disheartened, Mulford turned, and swam in the direction of the sinking star.  He now looked anxiously for the boat.  It was time that it came more plainly into view, and a new source of anxiety beset him, as he could discover no signs of its vicinity.  Certain that he was on the course, after making a due allowance for the direction of the wind, the stout-hearted young man swam on.  He next determined not to annoy himself by fruitless searches, or vain regrets, but to swim steadily for a certain time, a period long enough to carry him a material distance, ere he again looked for the object of his search.

For twenty minutes longer did that courageous and active youth struggle with the waste of waters, amid the obscurity and solitude of midnight.  He now believed himself near a mile from the wreck, and the star which had so long served him for a beacon was getting near to the horizon.  He took a new observation of another of the heavenly bodies nigh it, to serve him in its stead when it should disappear altogether, and then he raised himself in the water, and looked about again for the boat.  The search was in vain.  No boat was very near him, of a certainty, and the dreadful apprehension began to possess his mind, of perishing uselessly in that waste of gloomy waters.  While thus gazing about him, turning his eyes in every quarter, hoping intently to catch some glimpse of the much-desired object in the gloom, he saw two dark, pointed objects, that resembled small stakes, in the water within twenty feet of him.  Mulford knew them at a glance, and a cold shudder passed through his frame, as he recognised them.  They were, out of all question, the fins of an enormous shark; an animal that could not measure less than eighteen or twenty feet in length.