A Storm in the Tropics--The Lone Ship--The Man at the Wheel--How he sang strange Songs--The Apparition--The Drifting Bark. 

 

The blood-red sun had gone down into the Atlantic. Faint purple streaks streamed up the western horizon, like the fingers of some great shadowy hand clutching at the world. Huge masses of dark, agate-looking clouds were gathering in the zenith, and the heavy, close atmosphere told the coming of a storm. Now and then the snaky lightning darted across the heavens and coiled itself away in a cloud. A lone ship stood almost motionless in the twilight. The sails were close-reefed. Here and there on the forecastle were groups of lazy-looking seamen; and a man walked the quarter-deck, glancing anxiously aloft. The sea was as smooth as a mirror, and that dreadful stillness was in the air which so often preludes a terrific storm in the tropics. A rumbling was heard in the sky like the sound of distant artillery, or heavy bodies of water falling from immense heights. Then the surface of the sea was broken by mimic waves tipped with froth, and the vast expanse seemed like a prairie in a snow fall. The lightning became more frequent and vivid, and the thunder seemed breaking on the very topmasts of the vessel. Then the starless night sunk down on the ocean, and the sea raved in the gathering darkness. The storm was at its height: the wind,

 

    "Through unseen sluices of the air,"

 

tore the shrouds to strings, and bent the dizzy, tapering masts till they threatened to snap. But the bark bore bravely through it, while the huge waves seemed bearing her down to those coral labyrinths, where nothing goes "But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange." 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 p............