CHAPTER XIV.

A HURRICANE.-THE SYREN LOST.-A
NARROW ESCAPE.

One wildering moment of stir and commotion,
And down went the ship, like a bird of the ocean.
HOGG.

IT was on Thursday that Frank received his mother's letter, and on the following evening the dispatches of the Admiral were to be forwarded to Malta, and thence be transmitted to England. He lay almost all night awake, meditating on the contents of his intended reply, which he expected to write the first thing in the morning; but, when the morning came,

he was sent for, almost immediately after breakfast by Captain Medwin, and detained by him till near noon, when it was his turn to take the watch upon deck; and it was four o'clock ere he could sit down to put his project into execution.

The vessel was moving gently along towards the coast of Egypt, there was scarcely a breath of wind to curl the surface of the sea, and there was no agitation of the ship to prevent his writing with the greatest ease. He had, however, scarcely commenced, ere he heard a foot hurrying rapidly down the companion, and bursting into the gun-room; in an instant, the messenger returned upon deck, followed by one or two of the officers; the boatswain piped aloud all hands aloft to reef the topsails, and a midshipman came rushing into the berth, to say there was a squall approaching, and the sky to windward was as black as midnight. Godfrey was just sealing a letter to his mother, he handed it to Frank, and requested him to take charge of it for the captain's clerk, who would en

close it in the packet for England. Frank thrust it into his bosom, and his companion ran hastily upon deck.

In some parts of the Mediterranean, there are, at all times, to be apprehended sudden and violent gusts of wind, denominated by the seamen "squalls," which come on almost as sudden as lightning. Their first appearance on the verge of the sky is like a dense black mass of clouds, and in the next moment they will be seen darkening the surface of the water, and rushing towards the vessels which lie in their direction, which are instantly enveloped in the midst of their fury, and frequently are unable to shorten sail rapidly enough to prevent them from oversetting, and sinking them to the bottom. Such was now the case with the Syren. Frank, terrified at the confusion and unwonted bustle overhead, rose from the table at which he was writing, and flew in a panic upon deck; he saw

the sky as black as pitch around him, that but a moment before had been clear, and bright, and beautiful; and, in the distance, the immense seventy-four of the Admiral, was tossing like a cork in the midst of the tempest.

He had not time, however, to attend to any thing but the concerns of his own ship; the men were now in confusion, scrambling about the rigging, and endeavouring to take in the expanded sails, and leave nothing but the bare masts exposed, so that the hurricane might blow over. On deck, the officers were running from one quarter to another, issuing orders, but it was all in vain. The topsails were almost untouched, when the squall reached them, and the mainsail was only half clewed up, when the impetuous gust of wind filled it in an instant, and rendered it totally impossible to take it in; the whole ocean had become suddenly swoln and billowy, whilst the raging

wind blew sheets of foam from every wave that curled above it, and rushed with a terrific sound through the masts and rigging of the Syren. All this had passed in a shorter time than I have taken to relate it: terror for a moment seemed to paralyze the efforts of the crew, and in the next, the resistless tempest laid the vessel on her side, the sea rushed in impetuously, and as the storm continued to bear her stern under water, she filled in an instant, and sunk into the terrific gulph; a tremendous whirlpool accompanied her descent, and as the waters closed above her, a gurgling rush of snowy foam arose to the surface of the sea, bearing with it some floating spars of timber and some water-casks, which had been lying on the decks.*

At the moment of her descent, Frank grasped

* An appalling accident occurred, as above narrated, in the Mediterranean, in the summer of 1826, when Admiral Sir Harry Neale commanded in the Revenge, and witnessed the loss of a brig of war which sunk during a squall, as I have described.