The thunder sent forth peal after peal, and, the heaven was like "a looming bastion fringed with fire." On through the slanting rain sped the ship, creaking and groaning, with its ribs warped and its great oaken spine trembling. The sailors on deck clung to the bulwarks; and below not a soul could sleep, for the thunder and the creaking of cordage filled their ears.

At midnight the storm abated; but the sea still ran dangerously high, and the wind sobbed through the rigging mournfully. The heaven was spangled with tremulous stars, and at the horizon the clouds hung down in gossamer folds-God's robe trailing in the sea!

Toward morning the waves grew suddenly calm, as if they had again heard that voice which of old said, "Peace, be still!" There was no one above decks, save the man at the wheel, who ever and anon muttered to himself, or hummed bits of poetry. He was a man in the mellow of life, in the Indian summer of manhood, which comes a little while before one falls "into the sere and yellow leaf." Once he must have been eminently handsome; but there were furrows on his intellectual forehead not traced by time's fingers. His eyes were peculiarly wild and restless.

The slightest tinge of red fringed the East, and

as the man watched it grow deeper and deeper, he sang snatches of those odd sea-songs which Shakspeare scatters through his plays:

"The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,

The gunner and his mate,

Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian and Margary,

But none of us cared for Kate.

For she had a tongue with a twang,

Would cry to a sailor, go hang!

She loved not the savor of tar or of pitch,

Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!"

Then his sonorous voice rang out these quaint words to the night:

"Full fathom five thy father lies:

Of his bones are coral made:

Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade-"

He abruptly broke off, and commenced:

"Break, break, break

On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me.

O, well for the fisherman's boy,

That he shouts with his sister at play!
O, well for the sailor lad,

That he sings in his boat on the bay!

And the stately ships go on,

To the haven under the hill;

But oh, for the touch of.a vanished hand,

And the sound of a voice that is still!

Break, break, break,

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead
Will never come back to me."

Suddenly he paused, while a paleness like death overspread his face; the spokes of the wheel slipped from his hold, and he called for help; but the wind went moaning through the shrouds, and drowned his voice. The sea moaned and the ship drifted with the wind.

"It comes again!" he cried; "the graveyard face! Go! I cannot bear those sad, reproachful eyesthose arms outstretched, asking mercy! Send foul fiends to torture me, and make my dreams hideous nightmares, but not this beautiful form to mock me with its purity, and kill me with its mild reproach. It has gone. But it will come again! It steals on me in the awful hours of night, when the air seems supernatural, and the mind is accessible to fear. It stood by my hammock last night; my conscious soul looked through my closed eyelids, and sleep felt its dreadful presence.. If it comes again I will throw myself into the sea! Hush!" he whispered,

"it stands by the cabin door, so Come not near me, pensive ghost. somebody! help! help!"

He sunk down by the wheel.

pale! so pale! Give me help,

The stars, at the approach of morning, had grown as white as pond-lilies, and the wind had died away; but the same moan came up from the sea. On in the morning twilight drifted the ship for an hour, without a helmsman, save that unseen hand which guides all things-which balances with equal love and tenderness a dew-drop or a world.

VII.