The sea sparkled with phosphorescence.

Not a sound was heard except the panting of the hard-worked little donkey-engine and the whirr of the line as it came up taut and dripping from the ocean depths.
The lamp, hanging from the mast, threw a bright glare on deck, presenting the strongest contrast with the black shadows, firm and motionless as marble.

The 11th day of December was now near its last hour.
The steamer was the _Susquehanna_, a screw, of the United States Navy, 4,000 in tonnage, and carrying 20 guns.

She had been detached to take soundings between the Pacific coast and the Sandwich Islands, the initiatory movement towards laying down an Ocean Cable, which the _Pacific Cable Company_ contemplated finally extending to China.

She lay just now a few hundred miles directly south of San Diego, an old Spanish town in southwestern California, and the point which is expected to be the terminus of the great _Texas and Pacific Railroad_.
The Captain, John Bloomsbury by name, but better known as 'High-Low Jack' from his great love of that game--the only one he was ever known to play--was a near relation of our old friend Colonel Bloomsbury of the Baltimore Gun Club.