preceding day, with all the tenderness of her impassioned and devoted soul,—­even he did not, in the first hours of her terrible consciousness, so much as command a single passing regard.  All the affections were for a period blighted in her bosom.  She seemed as one devoted, without the power of resistance, to a grief which calcined and preyed upon all other feelings of the mind.  One stunning and annihilating reflection seemed to engross every principle of her being; nor was it for hours after she had been restored to life and recollection that a deluge of burning tears, giving relief to her heart and a new direction to her feelings, enabled her at length to separate the past from, and in some degree devote herself to, the present.  Then, indeed, for the first time did she perceive and take pleasure in the presence of her lover; and clasping her beloved and weeping Clara to her heart, thank her God, in all the fervour of true piety, that she at least had been spared to shed a ray of comfort on her distracted spirit.  But we will not pain the reader by dwelling on a scene that drew tears even from the rugged and flint-nerved boatswain himself; for, although we should linger on it with minute anatomical detail, no powers of language we possess could convey the transcript as it should be.  Pass we on, therefore, to the more immediate incidents of our narrative.

The day now rapidly developing, full opportunity was afforded the mariners to survey the strict nature of their position.  To all appearance they were yet in the middle of the lake, for around them lay the belting sweep of forest that bounded the perspective of the equidistant circle, of which their bark was the focus or immediate centre.  The wind was dying gradually away, and when at length the sun rose, in all his splendour, there was scarce air enough in the heavens to keep the sails from flapping against the masts, or to enable the vessel to obey her helm.  In vain was the low and peculiar whistle of the seamen heard, ever and anon, in invocation of the departing breeze.  Another day, calm and breathless as the preceding, had been chartered from the world of light; and their hearts failed them, as they foresaw the difficulty of their position, and the almost certainty of their retreat being cut off.  It was while labouring under the disheartening consciousness of danger, peculiar to all, that the anxious boatswain summoned Captain de Haldimar and Sir Everard Valletort, by a significant beck of the finger, to the side of the deck opposite to that on which still lay the suffering and nearly broken-hearted girls.

“Well, Mullins, what now?” enquired the former, as he narrowly scanned the expression of the old man’s features:  “that clouded brow of yours, I fear me, bodes no agreeable information.”

“Why, your honour, I scarcely knows what to say about it; but seeing as I’m the only officer in the ship, now our poor captain is killed, God bless him!  I thought I might take the liberty to consult with your honours as to the best way of getting out of the jaws of them sharks of Ingians; and two heads, as the saying is, is always better than one.”