On first discovering the shortness of the supply of water, a calm sea was the very thing they had most dreaded. A storm they feared not to encounter. Through that—even though the wind were dead ahead—they could still make way; but in a calm they could do nothing but lie quiet upon the hot bosom of the sleeping ocean, wasting their days and hours—wasting what was now more precious than all—their scanty supply of water.
One and all were terrified at the prospect. They were all men who had made many a trip across the line, and had run the torrid zone both eastward and westward. They could read well the indications of the sky; and from its present appearance most of them foresaw, and were not slow to foretell, a long-continued calm. It might last a week, perhaps twice or three times as long. Sometimes there is a month of such windless weather in these latitudes. If it continued only for the shortest of these periods, then, indeed, would they be in danger, and no wonder they were freshly apprehensive.
As the sun went down, his disc appeared red and fiery. There was not a cloud in the sky—not a curl upon the sea.
It was the last time that sun ever shone upon the Pandora—when morning came, that bad, but beautiful barque, was a wreck upon the sea—a field of floating fragments!
Chapter Forty Seven.
You desire an explanation? You wish to know how the Pandora was destroyed?
In the closing passages of the preceding chapter, I ran ahead of my narrative. I shall now return to it.
The night came down still, but not silent; at least not silent on board the slave-ship. The cries of the ill-fated beings below still loaded the air—their voices growing hoarser and hoarser. The ruffians might cage their bodies, but they could not confine their tongues; and ever and anon rose that awful din, pealing along the decks, and echoing far out over the still bosom of the waters.