It was a terrific night.  The wind increased, and the sea got up more than ever--the thunder roared, and the lightning flashed; and as the schooner went plunging away through the foaming ocean, often I thought that she was about to sink down and never to rise again.  The dark, stern features of the pirates were lighted up now and again, as they stood at their posts, by the lightning as it played around us; but, strange to say, they appear to have far more dreaded the anger of their fellow-men than they did the fury of the elements.  Now and then, perhaps, conscience whispered in the ears of some one not totally deaf to its influence, that his last hour was approaching and that he must soon stand in the presence of an offended God, whose laws he had long systematically outraged; but, generally speaking, the consciences of that reckless crew had long since been put to sleep, never to awake till summoned, when hope should have fled, at the sound of the last trump. On every side those countenances--bold, fierce, God-defying--broke forth on me out of the darkness as the bright lightning gleamed across them. Each individual face of the dreadful picture is indelibly impressed on my memory.  At length the doctor went to his berth, and Jerry and I followed him to the cabin and crept into ours--wet, hungry, and sorrowful.  We slept--we had been so excited all day that we could not help that from very weariness; but my dreams, I know, were strangely troubled.