.

A DANGEROUS CRISIS.
It was late in the afternoon when Sarah Purfoy awoke from her uneasy slumber.

She had been dreaming of the deed she was about to do, and was flushed and feverish; but, mindful of the consequences which hung upon the success or failure of the enterprise, she rallied herself, bathed her face and hands, and ascended with as calm an air as she could assume to the poop-deck.
Nothing was changed since yesterday.

The sentries' arms glittered in the pitiless sunshine, the ship rolled and creaked on the swell of the dreamy sea, and the prison-cage on the lower deck was crowded with the same cheerless figures, disposed in the attitudes of the day before.
Even Mr.Maurice Frere, recovered from his midnight fatigues, was lounging on the same coil of rope, in precisely the same position.
Yet the eye of an acute observer would have detected some difference beneath this outward varnish of similarity.

The man at the wheel looked round the horizon more eagerly, and spit into the swirling, unwholesome-looking water with a more dejected air than before.