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frightfully near to them. The next instant Burgess him-
self— his boat lifted by the swiftly advancing billow—saw
a wild waste of raging seas scooped into abysmal troughs,
in which the bulk of a leviathan might wallow. At the bot-
tom of one of these valleys of water lay the mutineers’ boat,
looking, with its outspread oars, like some six-legged insect
floating in a pool of ink. The great cliff, whose every scar
and crag was as distinct as though its huge bulk was but a
yard distant, seemed to shoot out from its base towards the
struggling insect, a broad, flat straw, that was a strip of dry
land. The next instant the rushing water, carrying the six-
legged atom with it, creamed up over this strip of beach; the
giant crag, amid the thunder-crash which followed upon
the lightning, appeared to stoop down over the ocean, and
as it stooped, the billow rolled onwards, the boat glided
down into the depths, and the whole phantasmagoria was
swallowed up in the tumultuous darkness of the tempest.
Burgess—his hair bristling with terror—shouted to put
the boat about, but he might with as much reason have
shouted at an avalanche. The wind blew his voice away, and
emptied it violently into the air. A snarling billow jerked
the oar from his hand. Despite the desperate efforts of the
soldiers, the boat was whirled up the mountain of water
like a leaf on a water-spout, and a second flash of lightning
showed them what seemed a group of dolls struggling in
the surf, and a walnut-shell bottom upwards was driven
by the recoil of the waves towards them. For an instant all
thought that they must share the fate which had overtaken
the unlucky convicts; but Burgess succeeded in trimming

1 For the Term of His Natural Life