1828.] A Romance of High Holborn. 57 
antly amid tempest and ruin. Sometimes, when during partial clearings 
off, a few faint stars would smilingly peep forth, I gave them credit for 
their good intentions ; they looked mild, pitying, philosophical, and cons 
trasted well with the capricious bluster of that big Irish bully, the hur- 
ricane. But even this last had a few redeeming traits of humanity about 
him. His voice would take at intervals a touching elevated tone, and 
come sighing and wailing from distance across the water, solemn as an 
anthem, mournful as a wind-struck harp. And then the clouds—the 
ever-shifting silver-skirted clouds—the very slightest glance of the moon 
would suffice wholly to change their aspect. If before they resembled 
spirits, they would now assume a wilder character. Vast armies would 
seem deploying, file after file, in all the emblazoned panoply of triumph, 
with banners streaming and trumpets sounding, along the sky; an 
instant—and palaces, temples and colonnades, built after the most fantastic 
patterns of architecture, here broken into jagged ruins, there trim and 
shapely to the eye, and lit up with glittering transparencies, would rear their 
stately fronts instead: and these again would be succeeded by volcanos; 
spouting forth smoke and fire, cataracts sending up on all sides immense 
volumes of gaudy moonlit spray, together with a hundred similar at+ 
mospheric phenomena, so rapid and fertile, yet defineable in their com- 
binations, that an excited fancy might almost believe them real. 
It was now midnight, deep, awful midnight ; the few remaining pas- 
sengers had left the deck and retreated into a bed which they shared in 
common with the salt water. The Captain stood, like one bewildered, 
beside the helm, while I lay stretched along the forecastle, watching, as 
well as I could, the tremendous rushing of the waves. It was, indeed, a 
magnificent sight; one after another hurried by, swelling, gamboling; 
and interwoven each with each, like immense knotted ‘serpents: at one 
moment all the water of the world seemed gathered into a single billow ; 
then a pause would ensue—a sudden, mysterious pause—then the wind 
would call indignantly, as it were, upon the wave, urging it once more 
to action; then the thunder would crash above our heads like the con- 
vulsive groans of some dying giant ; and then, to wind up the whole, 
strange meteoric splendours would flash around us, resolved, that not one 
single horror should escape unnoticed. It was during a partial hush of 
the storm, when the wind, as if out of breath, was still, that a shifting 
light attached to some moving body, came bearing down full upon us. 
« This is an ugly night, Sir,” said the Captain, who now, for the first 
time, found words, “ yet methinks I see a sail a-head.” : 
_ © Surely not,” I replied, “ no earthly vessel but our own can live on 
such a sea.” 
__Scarcely had the words escaped me, when “helm’s a lee!’ was 
: meres out in a loud emphatic tone, something between rage and 
ight. [ 
_ The Captain strove to turn his helm, but in vain, the rudder had 
lost all power. At this instant, a rushing sound swept past us, and the 
_ two ships came in direct contact with each other. The crash was tre+ 
mendous: down with a dizzy spinning motion went the strange vessel ; 
one yell—but one shrill piercing yell, which is ever sounding in my ears, 
ensued—a pause, and all was over. 
. My heart died within me at that cry ; an icy shudder crept through 
me, every hair of my head seemed endowed with separate; vitality. To 
M.M. New Series —Vow. VI. No. 31. I 
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