So the fearful night wore on; the black scud was passing away, the stars shone out, and the four castaways began to hope that morning was at hand. Yet, ruthlessly, wave after wave came rolling over them, each with its high and monstrous head, curling white with snowy foam, though its sides were black and inky. Then there would be a roar as of thunder when each burst over the fragment of wreck, engulfing and half choking the poor dripping wretches who clung to it in silence and despair.
But now, as dawn, began to spread rapidly over the east, the sea went down, and the wind also; the waves ceased to roll over the broken deck, which floated steadily, and as it rose upheaved on each successive swell, the occupants cast around them, eager glances from their bloodshot eyes, in the hope of descrying a sail.
Dawn came thoroughly in—a cloudy morning, but no sunshine. Ere long they could see the whole horizon; but there no vestige of a sail was visible, and now they looked blankly in each other's pallid faces.
"My poor crew!" said Bartelot, with a thick sob in his throat, but the exclamation had escaped him many times before; "second-mate, carpenter, sail-maker, steward, cook, boys, and all—all gone but us, Morley. Sad—deplorable, is it not?"
"Do not grieve for what is irreparable," said Morrison.
"If I saw you, Bill Morrison, my friend Ashton, and my old shipmate Noah, all safe, I don't care if I were shark-meat this minute," he resumed, bitterly.
"Don't say so, Bartelot, my old boy," replied Morley, with an affectation of spirit he was far from feeling: "you have behaved bravely, and done all that man could do to save your ship. Take courage; you have buoyed me up many a day, when my heart had sunk to zero. Let me try to cheer you in turn."
"Cheer!" Tom repeated, shaking his head sadly, and still more bitterly, as he surveyed their home upon the waters.
"Oh, Heaven! to think of this being a bit of the old Princess we all loved so well!" groaned Morrison, looking almost affectionately on the frail planks over which the sea rippled at every heave.
"Aye, sir," chimed in Noah; "it are odd, but it was a bit of that same blessed deck, as was holystoned and prayer-booked, swabbed and squilgeed of a morning till it were white as snow—whiter a'most than the deck of her Majesty's yacht. I've poured half the sea over that deck, I have, when the head-pump was rigged for'ard of a morning, and now what is it, but only a bit of drift-wood, and we a clinging to it, like four wet barnacles? Lor' help us!"