It was in the latter part of the month of June, of the year seventeen hundred andninety something, that the angry waves of the Bay of Biscay were graduallysubsiding, after a gale of wind as violent as it was unusual during that period of theyear. Still they rolled heavily; and, at times, the wind blew up in fitful, angry gusts,as if it would fain renew the elemental combat; but each effort was more feeble, andthe dark clouds which had been summoned to the storm, now fled in every quarterbefore the powerful rays of the sun, who burst their masses asunder with a gloriousflood of light and heat; and, as he poured down his resplendent beams, piercingdeep into the waters of that portion of the Atlantic to which we now refer, with theexception of one object, hardly visible, as at creation, there was a vastcircumference of water, bounded by the fancied canopy of heaven. We have said,with the exception of one object; for in the centre of this picture, so simple, yet sosublime, composed of the three great elements, there was a remnant of the fourth.We say a remnant, for it was but the hull of a vessel, dismasted, water-logged, itsupper works only floating occasionally above the waves, when a transient reposefrom their still violent undulation permitted it to reassume its buoyancy. But thiswas seldom; one moment it was deluged by the seas, which broke as they pouredover its gunwale; and the next, it rose from its submersion, as the water escapedfrom the portholes at its sides.
