It struck the pirate broadside, and John Stevens last saw the vessel amid a mountain of waves and spray struggling to right itself.

It probably went down, as he never saw or heard of it more.
For hours the amazed castaway stood in the pelting rain and howling wind, with the roaring sea below him.

Was it all a dream, or was this only another freak of capricious fate, which doomed him to eternal misery.

The storm roared and the hungry sea swallowed up the pirate.
Why could not one have been spared?
Even a pirate would have made a companion; but fate had roused his hopes only to dash them to the earth again.
It was pitch dark save when a flash of lightning illuminated the heavens.

John Stevens turned slowly about to retrace his steps homeward, half believing it was some terrible dream which had brought him from his bed into the pelting storm, when by the aid of a flash of lightning he saw the Spanish galleon, which had been again stranded within a hundred yards of the beach.