Then, with a loud laugh, he cast the bottle forth among the Merry Men, who seemed to leap up, shouting to receive it.
'Ha'e, bairns!' he cried, 'there's your han'sel.

Ye'll get bonnier nor that, or morning.' Suddenly, out in the black night before us, and not two hundred yards away, we heard, at a moment when the wind was silent, the clear note of a human voice.

Instantly the wind swept howling down upon the Head, and the Roost bellowed, and churned, and danced with a new fury.

But we had heard the sound, and we knew, with agony, that this was the doomed ship now close on ruin, and that what we had heard was the voice of her master issuing his last command.

Crouching together on the edge, we waited, straining every sense, for the inevitable end.