The Pilot

Chapter 23

"Whilst vengeance, in the lurid air,

Lifts her red arm, exposed and bare--

Who, Fear, this ghastly train can see;

And look not madly wild, like thee!"

_Collins_.

It is certain that Tom Coffin had devised no settled plan of

operations, when he issued from the apartment of Borroughcliffe, if we

except a most resolute determination to make the best of his way to the

Ariel, and to share her fate, let it be either to sink or swim. But this

was a resolution much easier formed by the honest seaman than executed,

in his present situation. He would have found it less difficult to

extricate a vessel from the dangerous shoals of the "Devil's Grip," than

to thread the mazes of the labyrinth of passages, galleries, and

apartments, in which he found himself involved. He remembered, as he

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