Chapter 7 - Page 2

of horror, while the
piercing shriek of Adelheid sounded, in that fearful moment, as if beings
of super-human attributes were riding in the gale. The name of Sigismund
was heard, too, in one of those wild appeals that the frantic suffer to
escape them, in their despair. But the interval between the plunge into
the water and the swoop of the tempest was so short, that, to the senses
of the travellers, the whole seemed the occurrence of the same teeming
moment.

Maso had completed his work on the forecasts, had seen that other
provisions which he had ordered were duly made, and had reached the
tiller, just in time to witness and to understand all that occurred.
Adelheid and her female attendants were already lashed to the principal
masts, and ropes were given to the others around her, as indispensable
precautions; for the deck of the bark, now cleared of every particle of
its freight, was as exposed and as defenceless against the power of the
wind, as a naked heath. Such was the situation of the Winkelried, when the
omens of the night changed to their dread reality.

Instinct, in cases of sudden and unusual danger must do the office of
reason. There was no necessity to warn the unthinking but panic-struck
crowd to provide for their own safety, for every man in the centre of the
barge threw his body flaon the deck, and grasped the cords that Maso had
taken care to provide for that purpose, with the tenacity with which all
who possess life cling to the means of existence. The dogs gave beautiful
proofs of the secret and wonderful means that nature has imparted, to
answer the ends of their creation. Old Uberto crouched, cowering, and
oppressed with a sense of helplessness, at the side of his master, while
the Newfoundland follower of the mariner went leaping from gangway to
gangway, snuffing the heated air, and barking wildly, as if he would
challenge the elements to close for the strife.

A vast body of warm air had passed unheeded athwart the bark, during the
minute that preceded the intended sacrifice of Balthazar. It was the
forerunner of the hurricane, which had chased it from the bed where it had
been sleeping, since the warm and happy noon-tide. Ten thousand chariots
at their speed could not have equalled the rumbling that succeeded, when
the winds came booming over the lake. As if too eager to permit anything
within their fangs to escape, they brought with them a wild, dull light,
which filled while it clouded the atmosphere, and which, it was scarcely
fanciful to imagine, had been hurried down, in their vortex, from those
chill glaciers, where they had so long been condensing their forces for
the present descent. The waves were not increased, but depressed by the
pressure of this atmospheric