Evelyn hesitated, when the captain again urged her descent,—"You can only be in the way, lady."
She contested the point no longer, but allowed herself to be conducted to the cabin. It was a scene of strange confusion. The shock which sent the ship rolling amid the waters had roused the passengers from their short rest, and they crowded together with pale faces of anxiety and terror. The storm which had long been gathering, swept at last over sea and sky. More than night rested on the waters,—darkness made yet more deep by the fiery blaze which ever and anon kindled the horizon. And when that died away, the black cloud and blacker wave were mocked by a phosphoric sparkle, like the meteors which in some damp church yard gleam from the grave. The seamen, with every eye fixed, and every hand strained, were the fortunate; but wo for the wretches cooped in the cabin below, surrounded by an unaccustomed danger,—and fear is most terrible when strange. They were home-bred people, who had never dreamt but of dying quietly in their beds,—who had lived amid green fields, and in small and pleasant villages,—and who, alter they had thoughts of death, had softened the image of old age by prayer breathed from lips beloved
