“If witchcraft can clear the hold of a ship that
is already half full of water,” said Nighthead, casting
another sullen glance towards the attentive Wilder,
“the sooner it is done the better; for the whole
cunning of something more than a bungler in the
same will be needed, in order to make the pumps of
the `Royal Caroline' suck!”

“Does the ship leak?” demanded his superior,
with a quickness of utterance which sufficiently
proclaimed how important he deemed the intelligence.

“Yesterday, I would have boldly put my name to
the articles of any craft that floats the ocean; and,
had the Captain asked me if I understood her nature
and character, as certain as that my name is Francis
Nighthead, I should have told him, yes. But I find
that the oldest seaman may still learn something of
the water; though it should be got in crossing a ferry
in a flat.”

“What mean you, sir?” demanded Wilder, who,
for the first time, began to note the mutinous looks
assumed by his mate, no less than the threatening
manner in which he was seconded by the crew.
“Have the pumps rigged without delay, and clear
the ship of the water.”

Nighthead slowly complied with the former part
of this order; and, in a few moments, every thing
was arranged to commence the necessary, and, as it
would seem, urgent duty of pumping. But no man
lifted his hand to the laborious employment. The
quick eye of Wilder, who had now taken the alarm,
was not slow in detecting this reluctance; and he
repeated the order more sternly, calling to two of
the seamen, by name, to set the example of obedience.
The men hesitated, giving an opportunity to
the mate to confirm them, by his voice, in their
mutinous intentions.

“What need of hands to work a pump in a vessel

[figure description] Page 006.[end figure description]

like this?” he said, with a coarse laugh, but in which
secret terror struggled strangely with open malice.
“After what we have all seen this night, none here
will be amazed, should the vessel begin to spout out
the brine like a breathing whale.”

“What am I to understand by this hesitation, and
by this language?” said Wilder, approaching Nighthead
with a firm step, and an eye too proud to quail
before the plainest symptoms of insubordination.
“Is it you, sir, who should be foremost in exertion
at a moment like this, who dare to set an example
of disobedience?”

The mate recoiled a pace, and his lips moved;
still he uttered no audible reply. Wilder once more
bade him, in a calm and authoritative tone, lay his
own hands to the brake. Nighthead then found his
voice, in time to make a flat refusal; and, at the next
moment, he was felled to the feet of his indignant
Commander, by a blow he had neither the address
nor the power to resist. This act of decision was
succeeded by one single moment of breathless, wavering
silence among the crew; and then the common
cry, and the general rush of every man upon our defenceless
and solitary adventurer, were the signals
that open hostility had commenced. A shriek from
the quarter-deck arrested their efforts, just as a dozen
hands were laid violently upon the person of
Wilder, and, for the moment, occasioned a truce. It
was the fearful cry of Gertrude, which possessed
even the influence to still the savage intentions of a
set of beings so rude and so unnurtured as those
whose passions had just been awakened into fierce
activity. Wilder was released; and all eyes turned,
by a common impulse, in the direction of the sound.

During the more momentous hours of the past
night, the very existence of the passengers below
had been forgotten by most of those whose duty
kept them to the deck. If they had been recalled

[figure description] Page 007.[end figure description]

at all to the recollection of any, it was at those fleeting
moments when the mind of the young mariner,
who directed the movements of the ship, found leisure
to catch stolen glimpses of softer scenes than
the wild warring of the elements that was so actively
raging before his eyes. Nighthead had named
them, as he would have made allusion to a part of
the cargo, but their fate had little influence on his
hardened nature. Mrs Wyllys and her charge had
therefore remained below during the whole period,
perfectly unapprised of the disasters of the intervening
time. Buried in the recesses of their births,
they had heard the roaring of the winds, and the incessant
washing of the waters; but these usual accompaniments
of a storm had served to conceal
the crashing of masts, and the hoarse cries of the
mariners. For the moments of terrible suspense,
while the Bristol trader lay on her side, the better
informed governess had, indeed, some fearful glimmerings
of the truth; but, conscious of her uselessness,
and unwilling to alarm her less instructed companion,
she had sufficient self-command to be mute.
The subsequent silence, and comparative calm, induced
her to believe that she had been mistaken in
her apprehensions; and, long ere morning dawned,
both she and Gertrude had sunk into sweet and refreshing
slumbers. They had risen and mounted to
the deck together, and were still in the first burst of
their wonder at the desolation which met their gaze,
when the long-meditated attack on Wilder was made.

“What means this awful change?” demanded Mrs
Wyllys, with a lip that quivered, and a cheek which,
notwithstanding the extraordinary power she possessed
over her feelings, was blanched to the colour
of death.

The eye of Wilder was glowing, and his brow
was dark as those heavens from which they had just

[figure description] Page 008.[end figure description]

so happily escaped, as he answered, menacing his
assailants with an arm,—

“It means mutiny, Madam; rascally, cowardly
mutiny!”

“Could mutiny strip a vessel of her masts, and
leave her a helpless log upon the sea?”

“Hark ye, Madam!” roughly interrupted the mate;
“to you I will speak freely; for it is well known
who you are, and that you came on board the `Caroline'
a paying passenger. This night have I seen
the heavens and the ocean behave as I have never
seen them behave before. Ships have been running
afore the wind, light and buoyant as corks, with all
their spars stepped and steady, when other ships
have been shaved of every mast as close as the razor
sweeps the chin. Cruisers have been fallen in with,
sailing without living hands to work them; and, all
together, no man here has ever before passed a middle
watch like the one gone by.”

“And what has this to do with the violence I have
just witnessed? Is the vessel fated to endure every
evil!—Can you explain this, Mr Wilder?”

“You cannot say, at least, you had no warning of
danger,” returned Wilder, smiling bitterly.

“Ay, the devil is obliged to be honest on compulsion,”
resumed the mate. “Each of his imps sails
with his orders; and, thank Heaven! however he
may be minded to overlook the same, he has neither
courage nor power to do it. Otherwise, a peaceful
voyage would be such a rarity, in these unsettled
times, that few men would be found hardy enough
to venture on the water for a livelihood.—A warning!
Ay, we will own you gave us open and frequent
warning. It was a notice, that the consignee should
not have overlooked, when Nicholas Nichols met
with the hurt, as the anchor was leaving the bottom.
I never knew an accident happen at such a time,

[figure description] Page 009.[end figure description]

and no evil come of it. Then, had we a warning
with the old man in the boat; besides the neverfailing
ill luck of sending the pilot violently out of
the ship. As if all this wasn't enough, instead of
taking a hint, and lying peaceably at our anchors,
we got the ship under way, and left a safe and friendly
harbour of a Friday, of all the days in a week![1] So far from being surprised at what has happened, I
only wonder at finding myself still a living man; the
reason of which is simply this, that I have given my
faith where faith only is due, and not to unknown
mariners and strange Commanders. Had Edward
Earing done the same, he might still have had a
plank between him and the bottom; but, though half
inclined to believe in the truth, he had, after all, too
much leaning to superstition and credulity.”

This laboured and characteristic profession of
faith in the mate, though sufficiently intelligible to
Wilder, was still a perfect enigma to his female listeners.
But Nighthead had not formed his resolution
by halves, neither had he gone thus far, with
any intention to stop short of the completion of his
whole design. In a very few summary words, he
explained to Mrs Wyllys the desolate condition of
the ship, and the utter improbability that she could
continue to float many hours; since actual observation
had told him that her lower hold was already
half full of water.

“And what is then to be done?” demanded the
governess, casting a glance of bitter distress towards
the pallid and attentive Gertrude. “Is there no sail

[figure description] Page 010.[end figure description]

in sight, to take us from the wreck? or must we
perish in our helplessness!”

“God protect us from any more strange sails!”
exclaimed the surly Nighthead. “There we have
the pinnace hanging at the stern, and here must be
land at some forty leagues to the north-west. Water
and food are plenty, and twelve stout hands can soon
pull a boat to the continent of America; that is, always
provided, America is left where it was seen no later
than at the sun-set of yesterday.”

“You then propose to abandon the vessel?”

“I do. The interest of the owners is dear to all
good seamen, but life is sweeter than gold.”

“The will of heaven be done! But surely you
meditate no violence against this gentleman, who, I
am quite certain, has governed the vessel, in very
critical circumstances, with a discretion far beyond
his years!”

Nighthead muttered his intentions, whatever they
might be, to himself; and then he walked apart, apparently
to confer with the men, who already seemed
but too well disposed to second any of his views,
however mistaken or lawless. During the few moments
of suspense that succeeded, Wilder stood silent
and composed, a smile of something like scorn
struggling about his lip, and maintaining the air rather
of one who had power to decide on the fortunes of
others, than of a man whose own fate was most
probably at that very moment in discussion. When
the dull minds of the seamen had arrived at their
conclusion, the mate advanced to proclaim the result,
Indeed, words were unnecessary, in order to make
known a very material part of their decision; for
a party of the men proceeded instantly to lower the
stern-boat into the water, while others set about
supplying it with the necessary means of subsistence.

“There is room for all the Christians in the ship
to stow themselves in this pinnace,” resumed

[figure description] Page 011.[end figure description]

Nighthead; “and as for those that place their dependance
on any particular persons, why, let them call for aid
where they have been used to receive it.”

“From all which I am to infer that it is your intention,”
said Wilder, calmly, “to abandon the wreck,
and your duty?”

The half-awed but still resentful mate returned a
look in which fear and triumph struggled for the
mastery, as he answered,—

“You, who know how to sail a ship without a
crew, can never want a boat! Besides, you shall
never say to your friends, whoever they may be, that
we leave you without the means of reaching the land,
if you are indeed a land-bird at all. There is the
launch.”

“There is the launch! but well do you know, that,
without masts, all your united strengths could not
lift it from the deck; else would it not be left.”

“They that took the masts out of the `Caroline'
can put them in again,” rejoined a grinning seaman;
“it will not be an hour after we leave you, before a
sheer-hulk will come alongside, to step the spars
again, and then you may go cruise in company.”

Wilder appeared to be superior to any reply. He
began to pace the deck, thoughtful, it is true, but still
composed, and entirely self-possessed. In the mean
time, as a common desire to quit the wreck as soon
as possible actuated all the men, their preparations
advanced with incredible activity. The wondering
and alarmed females had hardly time to think clearly
on the extraordinary situation in which they found
themselves, before they saw the form of the helpless
Master borne past them to the boat; and, in another
minute, they were summoned to take their places at
his side.

Thus imperiously called upon to act, they began
to feel the necessity of decision. Remonstrances,
they feared, would be useless; for the fierce and

[figure description] Page 012.[end figure description]

malignant looks which were cast, from time to time,
at Wilder, as the labour proceeded, proclaimed the
danger of awakening such obstinate and ignorant
minds into renewed acts of violence. The governess
bethought her of an appeal to the wounded man;
but the look of wild care which he had cast about
him, on being lifted to the deck, and the expression
of bodily and mental pain that gleamed across his
rugged features, as he buried them in the blankets by
which he was enveloped, but too plainly announced
that little assistance was, in his present condition, to
be expected from him.

“What remains for us to do?” she at length demanded
of the seemingly insensible object of her
concern.

“I would I knew!” he answered quickly, casting
a keen but hurried glance around the whole horizon.
“It is not improbable that they should reach the
shore. Four-and-twenty hours of calm will assure
it.”

“And if otherwise?”

“A blow at north-west, or from any quarter off
the land, will prove their ruin.”

“But the ship?”

“If deserted, she must sink.”

“Then will I speak in your favour to these hearts
of flint! I know not why I feel such interest in
your welfare, inexplicable young man, but much
would I suffer rather than believe that you incurred
this peril.”

“Stop, dearest Madam,” said Wilder, respectfully
arresting her movement with his hand. “I cannot
leave the vessel.”

“We know not yet. The most stubborn natures
may be subdued; even ignorance can be made to
open its ears at the voice of entreaty. I may prevail.”

“There is one temper to be quelled—one reason

[figure description] Page 013.[end figure description]

to convince—one prejudice to conquer, over which
you have no power.”

“Whose is that?”

“My own.”

“What mean you, sir? Surely you are not weak
enough to suffer resentment against such beings to
goad you to an act of madness?”

“Do I seem mad?” demanded Wilder. “The
feeling by which I am governed may be false, but,
such as it is, it is grafted on my habits, my opinions;
I will say, my principles. Honour forbids me to
quit a ship that I command, while a plank of her is
afloat.”

“Of what use can a single arm prove at such a
crisis?”

“None,” he answered, with a melancholy smile.

“I must die, in order that others, who may be serviceable
hereafter, should do their duty.”

Both Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude stood regarding
his kindling eye, but otherwise placid countenance,
with looks whose concern amounted to horror. The
former read, in the very composure of his mien, the
unalterable character of his resolution; and the latter,
shuddering as the prospect of the cruel fate
which awaited him crowded on her mind, felt a
glow about her own youthful heart that almost
tempted her to believe his self-devotion commendable.
But the governess saw new reasons for apprehension
in the determination of Wilder. If she had
hitherto felt reluctance to trust herself and her ward
with a band such as that which now possessed the
sole authority, it was more than doubly increased by
the rude and noisy summons she received to hasten
and take her place among them.

“Would to Heaven I knew in what manner to
choose!” she exclaimed. “Speak to us, young man,
as you would counsel mother and sister.”

“Were I so fortunate as to possess relatives so

[figure description] Page 014.[end figure description]

near and dear,” returned the other, with emphasis,
“nothing should separate us at a time like this.”

“Is there hope for those who remain on the
wreck?”

“But little.”

“And in the boat?”

It was near a minute before Wilder made any answer.
He again turned his look around the bright
and broad horizon, and he appeared to study the
heavens, in the direction of the distant Continent,
with infinite care. No omen that could indicate the
probable character of the weather escaped his vigilance,
while his countenance reflected all the various
emotions by which he was governed, as he gazed.

“As I am a man, Madam,” he answered with fervour,
“and one who is bound not only to counsel
but to protect your sex, I distrust the time. I think
the chance of being seen by some passing sail equal
to the probability that those who adventure in the
pinnace will ever reach the land.”

“Then let us remain,” said Gertrude, the blood,
for the first time since her re-appearance on deck,
rushing into her colourless cheeks, until they appeared
charged to fulness. “I like not the wretches
who would be our companions in that boat.”

“Away, away!” impatiently shouted Nighthead.
“Each minute of light is a week of life to us all, and
every moment of calm, a year. Away, away, or we
leave you!”

Mrs Wyllys answered not, but she stood the image
of doubt and painful indecision. Then the plash of
oars was heard in the water, and at the next moment
the pinnace was seen gliding over the element, impelled
by the strong arms of six powerful rowers.

“Stay!” shrieked the governess, no longer undetermined;
“receive my child, though you abandon
me!”

A wave of the hand, and an indistinct rumbling

[figure description] Page 015.[end figure description]

in the coarse tones of the mate, were the only answers
given to her appeal. A long, deep, and breathing
silence followed among the deserted. The grim
countenances of the seamen in the pinnace soon became
confused and indistinct; and then the boat itself
began to lessen on the eye, until it seemed no
more than a dark and distant speck, rising and falling
with the flow and reflux of the blue waters. During
all this time, not even a whispered word was
spoken. Each of the party gazed, until sight grew
dim, at the receding object; and it was only when
his organs refused to convey the tiny image to his
brain, that Wilder himself shook off the impression
of the sort of trance into which he had fallen. His
look became bent on his companions, and he pressed
his hand upon his forehead, as though his brain were
bewildered by the deep responsibility he had assumed
in advising them to remain. But the sickening
apprehension quickly passed away, leaving in its
place a firmer mind, and a resolution too often tried,
in scenes of doubtful issue, to be long or easily shaken
from its calmness and self-possession.

“They are gone!” he exclaimed, breathing long
and heavily, like one whose respiration had been
unnaturally suspended.

“They are gone!” echoed the governess, turning
an eye, that was contracting with the intensity of
her care, on the marble-like and motionless form of
her pupil. “There is no longer any hope.”

The look that Wilder bestowed, on the same silent
but lovely statue, was scarcely less expressive than
the gaze of her who had nurtured the infancy of the
Southern Heiress, in innocence and love. His brow
grew thoughtful, and his lips became compressed,
while all the resources of his fertile imagination and
long experience gathered in his mind, in engrossing,
intense reflection.

“Is there hope?” demanded the governess, who

[figure description] Page 016.[end figure description]

was watching the change of his working countenance,
with an attention that never swerved.

The gloom passed away from his swarthy features,
and the smile that lighted them was like the radiance
of the sun, as it breaks through the blackest vapours
of the drifting gust.

“There is!” he said with firmness; “our case is
far from desperate.”

“Then, may He who rules the ocean and the
land receive the praise!” cried the grateful governess,
giving vent to her long-suppressed agony in a
flood of tears.

Gertrude cast herself upon the neck of Mrs
Wyllys, and for a minute their unrestrained emotions
were mingled.

“And now, my dearest Madam,” said Gertrude,
leaving the arms of her governess, “let us trust to
the skill of Mr Wilder; he has foreseen and foretold
this danger; equally well may he predict our
safety.”

“Foreseen and foretold!” returned the other, in
a manner to show that her faith in the professional
prescience of the stranger was not altogether so unbounded
as that of her more youthful and ardent
companion. “No mortal could have foreseen this
awful calamity; and least of all, foreseeing it, would
he have sought to incur its danger! Mr Wilder, I
will not annoy you with requests for explanations
that might now be useless, but you will not refuse
to communicate your grounds of hope.”

Wilder hastened to relieve a curiosity that he well
knew must be as painful as it was natural. The
mutineers had left the largest, and much the safest,
of the two boats belonging to the wreck, from a desire
to improve the calm, well knowing that hours of
severe labour would be necessary to launch it, from
the place it occupied between the stumps of the two
principal masts, into the ocean. This operation,

[figure description] Page 017.[end figure description]

which might have been executed in a few minutes
with the ordinary purchases of the ship, would have
required all their strength united, and that, too, to
be exercised with a discretion and care that would
have consumed too many of those moments which
they rightly deemed to be so precious at that wild
and unstable season of the year. Into this little ark
Wilder proposed to convey such articles of comfort
and necessity as he might hastily collect from the
abandoned vessel; and then, entering it with his
companions, to await the critical instant when the
wreck should sink from beneath them.

“Call you this hope?” exclaimed Mrs Wyllys,
when his short explanation was ended, her cheek
again blanching with disappointment. “I have heard
that the gulf, which foundering vessels leave, swallows
all lesser objects that are floating nigh!”

“It sometimes happens. For worlds I would not
deceive you; and I now say that I think our chance
for escape equal to that of being ingulfed with the
vessel.”

“This is terrible!” murmured the governess,
“but the will of Heaven be done! Cannot ingenuity
supply the place of strength, and the boat be cast
from the decks before the fatal moment arrives?”

Wilder shook his head in an unequivocal negative.

“We are not so weak as you may think us,” said
Gertrude. “Give a direction to our efforts, and let
us see what may yet be done. Here is Cassandra,”
she added—turning to the black girl already introduced
to the reader, who stood behind her young
and ardent mistress, with the mantle and shawls of
the latter thrown over her arm, as if about to attend
her on an excursion for the morning—“here is Cassandra,
who alone has nearly the strength of a man.”

“Had she the strength of twenty, I should despair
of launching the boat without the aid of machinery.
But we lose time in words; I will go below, in

[figure description] Page 018.[end figure description]

order to judge of the probable duration of our doubt;
and then to our preparations. Even you, fair and
fragile as you seem, lovely being, may aid in the
latter.”

He then pointed out such lighter objects as would
be necessary to their comfort, should they be so fortunate
as to get clear of the wreck, and advised their
being put into the boat without delay. While the
three females were thus usefully employed, he descended
into the hold of the ship, in order to note
the increase of the water, and make his calculations
on the time that would elapse before the sinking
fabric must entirely disappear. The fact proved their
case to be more alarming than even Wilder had been
led to expect. Stripped of her masts, the vessel had
laboured so heavily as to open many of her seams;
and, as the upper works began to settle beneath the
level of the ocean, the influx of the element was increasing
with frightful rapidity. As the young mariner
gazed about him with an understanding eye, he
cursed, in the bitterness of his heart, the ignorance
and superstition that had caused the desertion of the
remainder of the crew. There existed, in reality,
no evil that exertion and skill could not have remedied;
but, deprived of all aid, he at once saw the
folly of even attempting to procrastinate a catastrophe
that was now unavoidable. Returning with a
heavy heart to the deck, he immediately set about
those dispositions which were necessary to afford
them the smallest chance of escape.

While his companions deadened the sense of apprehension
by their light but equally necessary employment,
Wilder stepped the two masts of the boat,
and properly disposed of the sails, and those other
implements that might be useful in the event of success.
Thus occupied, a couple of hours flew by, as
though minutes were compressed into moments. At
the expiration of that period, his labour had ceased.

[figure description] Page 019.[end figure description]

He then cut the gripes that had kept the launch in
its place when the ship was in motion, leaving it
standing upright on its wooden beds, but in no other
manner connected with the hull, which, by this time,
had settled so low as to create the apprehension,
that, at any moment, it might sink from beneath
them. After this measure of precaution was taken,
the females were summoned to the boat, lest the
crisis might be nearer than he supposed; for he well
knew that a foundering ship was, like a tottering
wall, liable at any moment to yield to the impulse
of the downward pressure. He then commenced
the scarcely less necessary operation of selection
among the chaos of articles with which the ill-directed
zeal of his companions had so cumbered the
boat, that there was hardly room left in which they
might dispose of their more precious persons. Notwithstanding
the often repeated and vociferous remonstrances
of the negress, boxes, trunks, and packages
flew from either side of the launch, as though
Wilder had no consideration for the comfort and care
of that fair being in whose behalf Cassandra, unheeded,
like her ancient namesake of Troy, lifted
her voice so often in the tones of remonstrance.
The boat was soon cleared of what, under their circumstances,
was literally lumber; leaving, however,
far more than enough to meet all their wants, and
not a few of their comforts, in the event that the
elements should accord the permission to use them.

Then, and not till then, did Wilder relax in his
exertions. He had arranged his sails, ready to be
hoisted in an instant; he had carefully examined that
no straggling rope connected the boat to the wreck,
to draw them under with the foundering mass; and
he had assured himself that food, water, compass,
and the imperfect instruments that were then in use
to ascertain the position of a ship, were all carefully
disposed of in their several places, and ready to

[figure description] Page 020.[end figure description]

his hand. When all was in this state of preparation,
he disposed of himself in the stern of the boat, and
endeavoured, by the composure of his manner, to
inspire his less resolute companions with a portion of
his own firmness.

The bright sun-shine was sleeping in a thousand
places on every side of the silent and deserted wreck.
The sea had subsided to such a state of utter rest,
that it was only at long intervals that the huge and
helpless mass on which the ark of the expectants lay
was lifted from its dull quietude, to roll heavily, for
a moment, in the washing waters, and then to settle
lower into the greedy and absorbing element. Still
the disappearance of the hull was slow, and even
tedious, to those who looked forward with such impatience
to its total immersion, as to the crisis of
their own fortunes.

During these hours of weasy and awful suspense,
the discourse, between the watchers, though conducted
in tones of confidence, and often of tenderness,
was broken by long intervals of deep and
musing silence. Each forbore to dwell upon the
danger of their situation, in consideration of the
feelings of the rest; but neither could conceal the
imminent risk they ran, from that jealous watchfulness
of love of life which was common to them all.
In this manner, minutes, hours, and the day itself,
rolled by, and the darkness was seen stealing along
the deep, gradually narrowing the boundary of their
view towards the east, until the whole of the empty
scene was limited to a little dusky circle around the
spot on which they lay. To this change succeeded
another fearful hour, during which it appeared that
death was about to visit them, environed by its most
revolting horrors. The heavy plunge of the wallowing
whale, as he cast his huge form upon the
surface of the sea, was heard, accompanied by the
mimic blowings of a hundred imitators, that followed

[figure description] Page 021.[end figure description]

in the train of the monarch of the ocean. It appeared,
to the alarmed and feverish imagination of
Gertrude, that the brine was giving up all its monsters;
and, notwithstanding the calm assurances of
Wilder, that these accustomed sounds were rather
the harbingers of peace than signs of any new danger,
they filled her mind with images of the secret
recesses over which they seemed suspended by a
thread, and painted them replete with the disgusting
inhabitants of the caverns of the great deep. The
intelligent seaman himself was startled, when he
saw, on the surface of the water, the dark fins of the
voracious shark stealing around the wreck, apprised,
by his instinct, that the contents of the devoted vessel
were shortly to become the prey of his tribe.
Then came the moon; with its mild and deceptive
light, to throw the delusion of its glow on the varying
but ever frightful scene.

“See,” said Wilder, as the luminary lifted its pale
and melancholy orb out of the bed of the ocean;
“we shall have light for our hazardous launch!”

“Is it at hand?” demanded Mrs Wyllys, with all
the resolution of manner she could assume in so trying
a situation.

“It is—the ship has already brought her scuppers
to the water. Sometimes a vessel will float until
saturated with the brine. If ours sink at all, it will
be soon.”

“If at all! Is there then hope that she can float?”

“None!” said Wilder, pausing to listen to the
hollow and threatening sounds which issued from the
depths of the vessel, as the water broke through her
divisions, in passing from side to side, and which
sounded like the groaning of some heavy monster in
the last agony of nature. “None; she is already
losing her level!”

His companions saw the change; but, not for the
empire of the world, could either of them have

[figure description] Page 022.[end figure description]

uttered a syllable. Another low, threatening, rumbling
sound was heard, and then the pent air beneath blew
up the forward part of the deck, with an explosion
like that of a gun.

“Now grasp the ropes I have given you!” cried
Wilder, breathless with his eagerness to speak.

His words were smothered by the rushing and
gurgling of waters. The vessel made a plunge like
a dying whale; and, raising its stern high into the
air, glided into the depths of the sea, like the leviathan
seeking his secret places. The motionless
boat was lifted with the ship, until it stood in an attitude
fearfully approaching to the perpendicular.
As the wreck descended, the bows of the launch
met the element, burying themselves nearly to filling;
but, buoyant and light, it rose again, and, struck
powerfully on the stern by the settling mass, the little
ark shot ahead, as thog it had been driven by
the hand of man. Still, as the water rushed into the
vortex, every thing within its influence yielded to
the suction; and, at the next instant, the launch was
seen darting down the declivity, as if eager to follow
the vast machine, of which it had so long formed
a dependant, through the same gaping whirlpool,
to the bottom. Then it rose, rocking, to the surface;
and, for a moment, was tossed and whirled
like a bubble circling in the eddies of a pool. After
which, the ocean moaned, and slept again; the
moon-beams playing across its treacherous bosom,
sweetly and calm, as the rays are seen to quiver on
a lake that is embedded in sheltering mountains.

eaf058v2.n1

[1] The superstition, that Friday is an evil day, was not peculiar
to Nighthead; it prevails, more or less, among seamen,
to this hour. An intelligent merchant of Connecticut had a
desire to do his part in eradicating an impression that is sometimes
inconvenient. He caused the keel of a vessel to be laid
on a Friday; she was launched on a Friday; named the
“Friday;” and sailed on her first voyage on a Friday. Unfortunately
for the success of this well-intentioned experiment,
neither vessel nor crew were ever again heard of!

CHAPTER II.

[figure description] Page 023.[end figure description]

“We are safe!” said Wilder, who had stood, amid
the violence of the struggle, with his person firmly
braced against a mast, steadily watching the manner
of their escape. “Thus far, at least, are we safe;
for which may Heaven alone be praised, since no
art of mine could avail us a feather.”

The females had buried their faces in the folds of
the vestments and clothes on which they were sitting;
nor did even the governess raise her countenance,
until twice assured by her companion that the
imminency of the risk was past. Another minute
went by, during which Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude
were rendering their thanksgivings, in a manner and
in words less equivocal than the expression which
had just broken from the lips of the young seaman.
When this grateful duty was performed, they stood
erect, as if emboldened, by the offering, to look their
situation more steadily in the face.

On every side lay the seemingly illimitable waste
of waters. To them, their small and frail tenement
was the world. So long as the ship, sinking and
dangerous as she was, remained beneath them, there
had appeared to be a barrier between their existence
and the ocean. But one minute had deprived them
of even this failing support, and they now found
themselves cast upon the sea in a vessel that might
be likened to one of the bubbles of the element.
Gertrude felt, at that instnat, as though she would
have given half her hopes in life for the mere
sight of that vast and nearly untenanted Continent

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

which stretched for so many thousands of miles
along the west, and kept the world of waters to their
limits.

But the rush of emotions that so properly belonged
to their forlorn condition soon subsided, and
their thoughts returned to the study of the means
necessary to their further safety. Wilder had, however,
anticipated these feelings; and, even before
Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude had recovered their recollections,
he was occupied, aided by the ready
hands of the terrified but loquacious Cassandra, in
arranging the contents of the boat in such a manner
as would enable her to move through the element
with the least possible resistance.

“With a well-trimmed ship, and a fair breeze,”
cried our adventurer, cheerfully, so soon as his little
job was ended, “we may yet hope to reach the land
in one day and another night. I have seen the hour
when, in this good launch, I would not have hesitated
to run the length of the American coast, provided”—

“You have forgotten your provided,” said Gertrude,
observing that he hesitated, probably from a
reluctance to express any exception to the opinion,
which might increase the fears of his companions.

“Provided it were two months earlier in the year,”
he added, in a tone of less confidence.

“The season, is, then, against us: It only requires
the greater resolution in ourselves!”

Wilder turned his head to regard the fair speaker,
whose pale and placid countenance, as the moon
silvered her fine features, expressed any thing but
the courage to endure the hardships he so well knew
she was liable to encounter, before they might hope
to gain the Continent. After musing a moment, he
lifted his open hand towards the south-west, and
held its palm some little time to the air of the night.

“Any thing is better than idleness, for people in

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

our condition,” he said. “There are some symptoms
of the breeze coming in this quarter; I will be ready
to meet it.”

He then spread his two lug-sails; and, trimming
aft the sheets, placed himself at the helm, like one
who expected his services there might be shortly
needed. The result did not disappoint his expectations.
Ere long, the light canvas of the boat began
to flutter; and then, as he brought the bows in the
proper direction, the little vessel commenced moving
slowly along its blind and watery path.

The wind soon came fresher upon the sails,
heavily charged with the dampness of the hour.
Wilder urged the latter reason as a motive for the
females to seek their rest beneath a little canopy of
tarpaulings, which his foresight had also provided,
and on mattresses he had brought from the ship.
Perceiving that their protector wished to be alone,
Mrs Wyllys and her pupil did as desired; and, in a
few minutes, if not asleep, no one could have told
that any other than our adventurer had possession of
the solitary launch.

The middle hour of the night went by, without
any material change in the prospects of those whose
fate so much depended on the precarious influence
of the weather. The wind had freshened to a smart
breeze; and, by the calculations of Wilder, he had
already moved across many leagues of ocean, directly
in a line for the eastern end of that long and narrow
isle that separates the waters which wash the
shores of Connecticut from those of the open sea.
The minutes flew swiftly by; for the time was propitious,
and the thoughts of the young seaman were
busy with the recollections of a short but adventurous
life. At moments he leaned forward, as if he
would catch the gentle respiration of one who slept
beneath the dark and rude canopy, and as though
he might distinguish the soft breathings of her

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

slumbers from those of her companions. Then would
his form fall back into its seat, and his lip curl, or
even move, as he gave inward utterance to the wayward
fancies of his imagination. But at no time,
not even in the midst of his greatest abandonment to
reverie and thought, did he forget the constant, and
nearly instinctive, duties of his station. A rapid
glance at the heavens, an oblique look at the compass,
and an occasional, but more protracted, examination
of the pale face of the melancholy moon,
were the usual directions taken by his practised eyes.
The latter was still in the zenith; and his brow began
again to contract, as he saw that she was shining
through an atmosphere without a haze. He would
have liked better to have seen even those portentous
and watery circles by which she is so often environed,
and which are thought to foretel the tempest,
than the hard and dry medium through which her
beams fell so clear upon the face of the waters.
The humidity with which the breeze had commenced
was also gone; and, in its place, the quick, sensitive
organs of the seaman detected the often grateful,
though at that moment unwelcome, taint of the land.
All these were signs that the airs from the Continent
were about to prevail, and (as he dreaded, from certain
wild-looking, long, narrow clouds, that were
gathering over the western horizon) to prevail with
a power conformable to the turbulent season of the
year.

If any doubt had existed in the mind of Wilder
as to the accuracy of his prognostics, it would have
been solved about the commencement of the morning
watch. At that hour the inconstant breeze began
again to die; and, even before its last breathing
was felt upon the flapping canvas, it was met by
counter currents from the west. Our adventurer saw
at once that the struggle was now truly to commence,
and he made his dispositions accordingly. The

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

square sheets of duck, which had so long been exposed
to the mild airs of the south, were reduced to
one third their original size, by double reefs; and
several of the more cumbrous of the remaining articles,
such as were of doubtful use to persons in their
situation, were cast, without pausing to hesitate, into
the sea. Nor was this care without a sufficient object.
The air soon came sighing heavily over the
deep from the north-west, bringing with it the chilling
asperity of the inhospitable regions of the Canadas.

“Ah! well do I know you,” muttered Wilder, as
the first puff of this unwelcome wind struck his sails,
and forced the little boat to bend to its power in
passing; “well do I know you, with your fresh-water
flavour and your smell of the land! Would to
God you had blown your fill upon the lakes, without
coming down to drive many a weary seaman back
upon his wake, and to eke out a voyage, already too
long, by your bitter colds and steady obstinacy!”

“Do you speak?” said Gertrude, half appearing
from beneath her canopy, and then shrinking back,
shivering, into its cover again, as she felt the influence
in the change of air.

“Sleep, Lady, sleep,” he answered, as though he
liked not, at such a moment, to be disturbed by even
her soft and silvery voice.

“Is there new danger?” asked the maiden, stepping
lightly from the mattress, as if she would not
disturb the repose of her governess. “You need not
fear to tell me the worst: I am a soldier's child!”

He pointed to the signs so well comprehended by
himself, but continued silent.

“I feel that the wind is colder than it was,” she
said, “but I see no other change.”

“And do you know whither the boat is going?”

“To the land, I think. You assured us of that,
and I do not believe you would willingly deceive.”

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

“You do me justice; and, as a proof of it, I will
now tell you that you are mistaken. I know that to
your eyes all points of the compass, on this void,
must seem the same; but I cannot thus easily deceive
myself.”

“And we are not sailing for our homes?”

“So far from it, that, should this course continue,
we must cross the whole Atlantic before your eyes
could again see land.”

Gertrude made no reply, but retired, in sorrow, to
the side of her governess. In the mean time, Wilder,
again left to himself, began to consult his compass
and the direction of the wind. Perceiving that
he might approach nearer to the continent of America
by changing the position of the boat, he wore
round, and brought its head as nigh up to the south-west
as the wind would permit.

But there was little hope in this trifling change.
At each minute, the power of the breeze was increasing,
until it soon freshened to a degree that
compelled him to furl his after-sail. The slumbering
ocean was not long in awakening; and, by the time
the launch was snug under a close-reefed fore-sail,
the boat was rising on dark and ever-growing waves,
or sinking into the momentary calm of deep furrows,
whence it rose again, to feel the rapidly increasing
power of the blasts. The dashing of the waters,
and the rushing of the wind, which now began to
sweep heavily across the blue waste, quickly drew
the females to the side of our adventurer. To their
hurried and anxious questions he made considerate
but brief replies, like a man who felt that the time
was far better suited to action than to words.

In this manner the last lingering minutes of the
night went by, loaded with a care that each moment
rendered heavier, and which each successive freshening
of the breeze had a tendency to render doubly
anxious. The day came, only to bestow more

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

distinctness on the cheerless prospect. The waves
were looking green and angrily, while, here and
there, large crests of foam were beginning to break
on their summits—the certain evidence that a conflict
betwixt the elements was at hand. Then came
the sun over the ragged margin of the eastern horizon,
climbing slowly into the blue arch above, which lay
clear, chilling, distinct, and entirely without a cloud.

Wilder noted all these changes of the hour with a
closeness that proved how critical he deemed their
case. He seemed rather to consult the signs of the
heavens than to regard the tossings and rushings of
the water, which dashed against the side of his little
vessel in a manner that, to the eyes of his companions,
often appeared to threaten their total destruction.
To the latter he was too much accustomed,
to anticipate the true moment of alarm, though to
less instructed senses it might already seem so dangerous.
It was to him as is the thunder, when compared
to the lightning, in the mind of the philosopher;
or rather he knew, that, if harm might come
from the one on which he floated, its ability to injure
must first be called into action by the power of
the sister element.

“What think you of our case now?” asked Mrs
Wyllys, keeping her look closely fastened on his
countenance, as if she would rather trust its expression,
than even to his words for the answer.

“So long as the wind continues thus, we may yet
hope to keep within the route of ships to and from
the great northern ports; but, if it freshen to a gale,
and the sea begin to break with violence, I doubt the
ability of this boat to lie-to.”

“Then our resource must be in endeavouring to
run before the gale.”

“Then must we scud.”

“What would be our direction, in such an event?”
demanded Gertrude, to whose mind, in the

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

agitation of the ocean and the naked view on every hand,
all idea of places and distances was lost, in the most
inextricable confusion.

“In such an event,” returned our adventurer, regarding
her with a look in which commiseration
and indefinite concern were so singularly mingled,
that her own mild gaze was changed into a timid and
furtive glance, “in such an event, we should be
leaving that land it is so important to reach.”

“What 'em 'ere?” cried Cassandra, whose large
dark eyes were rolling on every side of her, with a
curiosity that no care or sense of danger could extinguish;
“'em berry big fish on a water?”

“It is a boat!” cried Wilder, springing upon a
thwart, to catch a glimpse of a dark object that was
driving on the glittering crest of a wave, within a
hundred fect of the spot where the launch itself was
struggling through the brine. “What ho!—boat,
ahoy!—holloa there!—boat, ahoy!”

The deep breathing of the wind swept by them,
but no human sound responded to his shout. They
had already fallen, between two seas, into a deep
vale of water, where the narrow view extended no
farther than the dark and rolling barriers on either
side.

“Merciful Providence!” exclaimed the governess,
“can there be others as unhappy as ourselves!”

“It was a boat, or my sight is not true as usual,”
returned Wilder, still keeping his stand, to watch
the moment when he might catch another view. His
wish was quickly realized. He had trusted the helm,
for the moment, to the hands of Cassandra, who suffered
the launch to vary a little from its course. The
words were still on his lips, when the same black
object came sweeping down the wave to windward,
and a pinnace, bottom upwards, washed past them
in the trough. Then followed a shriek from the
negress, who abandoned the tiller, and, sinking on

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

her knees, hid her face in her hands. Wilder instinctively
caught the helm, as he bent his face in
the direction whence the revolting eye of Cassandra
had been turned. A grim human form was seen,
erect, and half exposed, advancing in the midst of
the broken crest which was still covering the dark
declivity to windward with foam. For a moment,
it stood with the brine dripping from the drenched
locks, like some being that had issued from the deep
to turn its frightful features on the spectators; and
then the lifeless body of a drowned man drove past
the launch, which, at the next minute, rose to the
summit of the wave, to sink into another vale, where
no such terrifying object floated.

Not only Wilder, but Gertrude and Mrs Wyllys,
had seen this startling spectacle so nigh them as to
recognize the countenance of Nighthead, rendered
still more stern and forbidding than ever, in the impression
left by death. But neither spoke, nor gave
any other evidence of their intelligence. Wilder
hoped that his companions had at least escaped the
shock of recognizing the victim; and the females
themselves saw, in the hapless fortune of the mutineer,
too much of their own probable though more
protracted fate, to be able to give vent to the horror
each felt so deeply, in words. For some time, the
elements alone were heard sighing a sort of hoarse
requiem over the victims of their conflict.

“The pinnace has filled!” Wilder at length observed,
when he saw, by the pallid features and
meaning eyes of his companions, it was in vain to
affect reserve on the subject any longer. “Their
boat was frail, and loaded to the water's edge.”

“Think you all are lost?” observed Mrs Wyllys,
in a voice that scarcely amounted to a whisper.

“There is no hope for any! Gladly would I part
with an arm, for the assistance of the poorest of
those misguided seamen, who have hurried on their

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

evil fortune by their own disobedience and ignorance.”

“And, of all the happy and thoughtless human
beings who lately left the harbour of Newport, in a
vessel that has so long been the boast of mariners,
we alone remain!”

“There is not another: This boat, and its contents,
are the sole memorials of the `Royal Caroline!
' ”

“It was not within the ken of human knowledge
to foresee this evil,” continued the governess, fastening
her eye on the countenance of Wilder, as
though she would ask a question which conscience
told her, at the same time, betrayed a portion of that
very superstition which had hastened the fate of the
rude being they had so lately passed.

“It was not.”

“And the danger, to which you so often and so inexplicably
alluded, had no reference to this we have
incurred?”

“It had not.”

“It has gone, with the change in our situation?”

“I hope it has.”

“See!” interrupted Gertrude, laying a hand, in
her haste, on the arm of Wilder. “Heaven be
praised! yonder is something at last to relieve the
view.”

“It is a ship!” exclaimed her governess; but, an
envious wave lifting its green side between them and
the object, they sunk into a trough, as though the
vision had been placed momentarily before their
eyes, merely to taunt them with its image. The
quick glance of Wilder had caught, however, a
glimpse of the tracery against the heavens, as they
descended. When the boat rose again, his look was
properly directed, and he was enabled to be certain
of the reality of the vessel. Wave succeeded wave,
and moments followed moments, during which the

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

stranger was given to their gaze, and as often disappeared,
as the launch unavoidably fell into the troughs
of the seas. These short and hasty glimpses sufficed,
however, to convey all that was necessary to the
eye of a man who had been nurtured on that element,
where circumstances now exacted of him
such constant and unequivocal evidences of his skill.

At the distance of a mile, there was in fact a ship
to be seen, rolling and pitching gracefully, and without
any apparent effort, on those waves through
which the launch was struggling with such difficulty.
A solitary sail was set, to steady the vessel, and that
so reduced, by reefs, as to look like a little snowy
cloud amid the dark maze of rigging and spars. At
times, her long and tapering masts appeared pointing
to the zenith, or even rolling as if inclining against
the wind; and then, again, with slow and graceful
sweeps, they seemed to fall towards the ruffled surface
of the ocean, as though about to seek refuge
from their endless motion, in the bosom of the agitated
element itself. There were moments when
the long, low, and black hull was seen distinctly
resting on the summit of a sea, and glittering in the
sun-beams, as the water washed from her sides; and
then, as boat and vessel sunk together, all was lost to
the eye, even to the attenuated lines of her tallest and
most delicate spars.

Both Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude bowed their faces
to their knees, when assured of the truth of their
hopes, and poured out their gratitude in silent and
secret thanksgivings. The joy of Cassandra was
more clamorous, and less restrained. The simple
negress laughed, shed tears, and exulted in the most
touching manner, on the prospect that was now offered
for the escape of her young mistress and herself
from a death that the recent sight had set before
her imagination in the most frightful form. But no
answering look of congratulation was to be traced

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

in the contracting and anxious eye of their companion.

“Now,” said Mrs Wyllys, seizing his hand in both
her own, “may we hope to be delivered; and then
shall we be allowed, brave and excellent young man,
some opportunity of proving to you how highly we
esteem your services.”

Wilder permitted the burst of her feelings with a
species of bewildered care, but he neither spoke,
nor in any other manner exhibited the smallest sympathy
in her joy.

“Surely you are not grieved, Mr Wilder,” added
the wondering Gertrude, “that the prospect of escape
from these awful waves is at length so mercifully
held forth to us!”

“I would gladly die to shelter you from harm,”
returned the young sailor; “but”—

“This is not a time for any thing but gratitude and
rejoicing,” interrupted the governess; “I cannot
hearken to any cold exceptions now; what mean
you with that `but?' ”

“It may be not so easy as you think to reach yon
ship—the gale may prevent—in short, many is the
vessel that is seen at sea which cannot be spoken.”

“Happily, such is not our cruel fortune. I understand,
considerate and generous youth, your wish to
dampen hopes that may possibly be yet thwarted;
but I have too long, and too often, trusted this dangerous
element, not to know that he who has the
wind can speak, or not, as he pleases.”

“You are right in saying we are to windward,
Madam; and, were I in a ship, nothing would be
easier than to run within hail of the stranger.—That
ship is certainly lying-to, and yet the gale is not
fresh enough to bring so stout a vessel to so short
canvas.”

“They see us, then, and await our arrival.”

“No, no: Thank God, we are not yet seen! This

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

little rag of ours is blended with the spray. They
take it for a gull, or a comb of the sea, for the moment
it is in view.”

“And do you thank Heaven for this!” exclaimed
Gertrude, regarding the anxious Wilder with a wonder
that her more cautious governess had the power
to restrain.

“Did I thank Heaven for not being seen! I may
have mistaken the object of my thanks: It is an
armed ship!”

“Perhaps a cruiser of the King's! We are the
more likely to meet with a welcome reception! Delay
not to hoist some signal, lest they increase their
sail, and leave us.”

“You forget that the enemy is often found upon
our coast. This might prove a Frenchman!”

“I have no fears of a generous enemy. Even a
pirate would give shelter, and welcome, to females
in such distress.”

A long and profound silence succeeded. Wilder
still stood upon the thwart, straining his eyes to read
each sign that a seaman understands; nor did he appear
to find much pleasure in the task.

“We will drift ahead,” he said, “and, as the ship
is lying on a different tack, we may yet gain a position
that will leave us masters of our future movements.”

To this his companions knew not well how to
make any objections. Mrs Wyllys was so much
struck with the remarkable air of coldness with
which he met this prospect of refuge against the forlorn
condition in which he had just before confessed
they were placed, that she was much more disposed
to ponder on the cause, than to trouble him with
questions which she had the discernment to see
would be useless. Gertrude wondered, while she
was disposed to think he might be right, though she
knew not why. Cassandra alone was rebellious.

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

She lifted her voice in loud objections against a moment's
delay, assuring the abstracted and perfectly inattentive
young seaman, that, should any evil come to
her young mistress by his obstinacy, General Grayson
would be angered; and then she left him to reflect
on the results of a displeasure that to her simple
mind teemed with all the danger that could attend
the anger of a monarch. Provoked by his contumacious
disregard of her remonstrances, the negress,
forgetting all her respect, in blindness in behalf of
her whom she not only loved, but had been taught
to reverence, seized the boat-hook, and, unperceived
by Wilder, fastened to it, with dexterity, one of
the linen cloths that had been brought from the
wreck, and exposed it, far above the diminished sail,
for a couple of minutes, ere her device had caught
the eyes of either of her companions. Then, indeed,
she lowered the signal, in haste, before the
dark and frowning look of Wilder. But, short as
was the triumph of the negress, it was crowned with
complete success.

The restrained silence, which is so apt to succeed
a sudden burst of displeasure, was still reigning in
the boat, when a cloud of smoke broke out of the
side of the ship, as she lay on the summit of a
wave; and then came the deadened roar of artillery,
struggling heavily up against the wind.

“It is now too late to hesitate,” said Mrs Wyllys;
“we are seen, let the stranger be friend or enemy.”

Wilder did not answer, but continued to profit,
by each opportunity, to watch the movements of the
stranger. In another moment, the spars were seen
receding from the breeze, and, in a couple of minutes
more, the head of the ship was changed to the direction
in which they lay. Then appeared four or
five broader sheets of canvas in different parts of the
complicated machinery, while the vessel bowed to
the gale, as though she inclined still lower before its

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

power. At moments, as she mounted on a sea, her
bows seemed issuing from the element altogether,
and high jets of spray were cast into the air, glittering
in the sun, as the white particles scattered in
the breeze, or fell in gems upon the sails and rigging.

“It is now too late, indeed;” murmured our adventurer,
bearing up the helm of his own little craft,
and letting its sheet glide through his hands, until
the sail was bagging with the breeze nearly to bursting.
The boat, which had so long been labouring
through the water, with a wish to cling as nigh as
possible to the Continent, flew over the seas, leaving
a long trail of foam behind it; and, before either of
the females had regained their entire self-possession,
she was floating in the comparative calm that was
created by the hull of a large vessel. A light active
form stood in the rigging of the ship, issuing the necessary
orders to a hundred seamen; and, in the
midst of the confusion and alarm that such a scene
was likely to cause in the bosom of woman, Gertrude
and Mrs Wyllys, with their two companions,
were transferred in safety to the decks of the stranger.
The moment they and their effects were secured,
the launch was cut adrift, like useless lumber.
Twenty mariners were then seen climbing among the
ropes; and sail after sail was opened still wider, until,
bearing the vast folds of all her canvas spread, the
vessel was urged along the trackless course, like a
swift cloud drifting through the thin medium of the
upper air.

CHAPTER III.

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

When the velocity with which the vessel flew before
the wind is properly considered, the reader
will not be surprised to learn, that, with the change
of a week in the time from that with which the
foregoing incidents close, we are enabled to open
the scene of the present chapter in a very different
quarter of the same sea. It is unnecessary to follow
the “Rover” in the windings of that devious and
apparently often uncertain course, during which his
keel furrowed more than a thousand miles of ocean,
and during which more than one cruiser of the King
was skilfully eluded, and sundry less dangerous rencounters
avoided, as much from inclination as any
other visible cause. It is quite sufficient for our
purpose to lift the curtain, which must conceal her
movements for a time, to expose the gallant vessel in
a milder climate, and, when the season of the year is
considered, in a more propitious sea.

Exactly seven days after Gertrude and her governess
became the inmates of a ship whose character
it is no longer necessary to conceal from the reader,
the sun rose upon her flapping sails, symmetrical
spars, and dark hull, within sight of a few, low,
small and rocky islands. The colour of the element
would have told a seaman, had no mound of blue
land been seen issuing out of the world of waters,
that the bottom of the sea was approaching nigher
than common to its surface, and that it was necessary
to guard against the well-known and dreaded
dangers of the coast. Wind there was none; for
the vacillating and uncertain air which, from time to

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

time, distended for an instant the lighter canvas of
the vessel, deserved to be merely termed the breathings
of a morning, which was breaking upon the
main, soft, mild, and seemingly so bland as to impart
to the ocean the placid character of a sleeping
lake.

Every thing having life in the ship was already up
and stirring. Fifty stout and healthy-looking seamen
were hanging in different parts of her rigging, some
laughing, and holding low converse with messmates
who lay indolently on the neighbouring spars, and
others leisurely performing the light and trivial duty
that was the ostensible employment of the moment.
More than as many others loitered carelessly about
the decks below, somewhat similarly engaged; the
whole wearing much the appearance of men who
were set to perform certain immaterial tasks, more
to escape the imputation of idleness than from any
actual necessity that the same should be executed.
The quarter-deck, the hallowed spot of every vessel
that may pretend to either discipline or its semblance,
was differently occupied, though by a set of beings
who could lay no greater claim to activity or interest.
In short, the vessel partook of the character of the
ocean and of the weather, both of which seemed
reserving their powers to some more suitable occasion
for their display.

Three or four young (and, considering the nature
of their service, far from unpleasant-looking) men
appeared in a sort of undress nautical uniform, in
which the fashion of no people in particular was
very studiously consulted. Notwithstanding the apparent
calm that reigned on all around them, each
of these individuals bore a short straight dirk at his
girdle; and, as one of them bent over the side of
the vessel, the handle of a little pistol was discovered
through an opening in the folds of his professional
frock. There were, however, no other immediate

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

signs of distrust, whence an observer might infer
that this armed precaution was more than the usual
custom of the vessel. A couple of grim and callous
looking sentinels, who were attired and accoutred
like soldiers of the land, and who, contrary to marine
usage, were posted on the line which separated the
resorting place of the officers from the forward part
of the deck, bespoke additional caution. But, still,
all these arrangements were regarded by the seamen
with incurious eyes—a certain proof that use had
long rendered them familiar.

The individual who has been introduced to the
reader under the high-sounding title of “General,”
stood upright and rigid as one of the masts of the
ship, studying, with a critical eye, the equipments of
his two mercenaries, and apparently as regardless of
what was passing around him as though he literally
considered himself a fixture in the vessel. One form,
however, was to be distinguished from all around it,
by the dignity of its mien and the air of authority
that breathed even in the repose of its attitude. It
was the Rover, who stood alone, none presuming to
approach the spot where he had chosen to plant his
light but graceful and imposing person. There was
ever an expression of stern investigation in his quick
wandering eye, as it roved from object to object in
the equipment of the vessel; and at moments, as his
look appeared fastened on some one of the light
fleecy clouds that floated in the blue vacuum above
him, there gathered about his brow a gloom like that
which is thought to be the shadowing of intense
thought. Indeed, so dark and threatening did this
lowering of the eye become, at times, that the fair
hair which broke out in ringlets from beneath a black
velvet sea-cap, from whose top depended a tassel of
gold, could no longer impart to his countenance the
gentleness which it sometimes was seen to express.
As though he disdained concealment, and wished to

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

announce the nature of the power he wielded, he
wore his pistols openly in a leathern belt, that was
made to cross a frock of blue, delicately edged with
gold, and through which he had thrust, with the same
disregard of concealment, a light and curved Turkish
yattagan, with a straight stiletto, which, by the
chasings of its handle, had probably originally come
from the manufactory of some Italian artisan.

On the deck of the poop, overlooking the rest,
and retired from the crowd beneath them, stood Mrs
Wyllys and her charge, neither of whom announced
in the slightest degree, by eye or air, that anxiety
which might readily be supposed natural to females
who found themselves in a condition so critical as in
the company of lawless freebooters. On the contrary,
while the former pointed out to the latter the
hillock of pale blue which rose from the water, like
a dark and strongly defined cloud in the distance,
hope was strongly blended with the ordinarily placid
expression of her features. She also called to Wilder,
in a cheerful voice; and the youth, who had
long been standing, with a sort of jealous watchfulness,
at the foot of the ladder which led from the
quarter-deck, was at her side in an instant.

“I am telling Gertrude,” said the governess, with
those tones of confidence which had been created
by the dangers they had incurred together, “that
yonder is her home, and that, when the breeze shall
be felt, we may speedily hope to reach it; but the
wilfully timid girl insists that she cannot believe her
senses, after the frightful risks we have run, until, at
least, she shall see the dwelling of her childhood,
and the face of her father. You have often been on
this coast before, Mr Wilder?”

“Often, Madam.”

“Then, you can tell us what is the distant land we
see.”

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

“Land!” repeated our adventurer, affecting a look
of surprise; “is there then land in view?”

“Is there land in view! Have not hours gone by
since the same was proclaimed from the masts?”

“It may be so: We seamen are dull after a night
of watching, and often hear but little of that which
passes.”

There was a quick, suspicious glance from the
eye of the governess, as if she apprehended, she
knew not what, ere she continued,—

“Has the sight of the cheerful, blessed soil of
America so soon lost its charm in your eye, that you
approach it with an air so heedless? The infatuation
of men of your profession, in favour of so dangerous
and so treacherous an element, is an enigma
I never could explain.”

“Do seamen, then, love their calling with so devoted
an affection?” demanded Gertrude, in a haste
that she might have found embarrassing to explain.

“It is a folly of which we are often accused,” rejoined
Wilder, turning his eye on the speaker, and
smiling in a manner that had lost every shade of reserve.

“And justly?”

“I fear, justly.”

“Ay!” exclaimed Mrs Wyllys, with an emphasis
that was remarkable for the tone of soft and yet bitter
regret with which it was uttered; “often better
than their quiet and peaceful homes!”

Gertrude pursued the idea no further; but her
fine full eye fell upon the deck, as though she reflected
deeply on a perversity of taste which could render
man so insensible to domestic pleasures, and incline
him to court the wild dangers of the ocean.

“I, at least, am free from the latter charge,” exclaimed
Wilder: “To me a ship has always been a
home.”

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

“And much of my life, too, has been wasted in
one,” continued the governess, who evidently was
pursuing, in the recesses of her own mind, some
images of a time long past. “Happy and miserable,
alike, have been the hours that I have passed upon
the sea! Nor is this the first King's ship in which it
has been my fortune to be thrown. And yet the
customs seem changed since those days I mention;
or else memory is beginning to lose some of the
impressions of an age when memory is apt to be
most tenacious. Is it usual, Mr Wilder, to admit an
utter stranger, like yourself, to exercise authority in
a vessel of war?”

“Certainly not.”

“And yet have you been acting, as far as my weak
judgment teaches, as second here, since the moment
we entered this vessel, wrecked and helpless fugitives
from the waves.”

Our adventurer again averted his eye, and evidently
searched for words, ere he replied,—

“A commission is always respected: Mine procured
for me the consideration you have witnessed.”

“You are then an officer of the Crown?”

“Would any other authority be respected in a
vessel of the Crown? Death had left a vacancy in
the second station of this—cruiser. Fortunately for
the wants of the service, perhaps for myself, I was
at hand to fill it.”

“But, tell me farther,” continued the governess,
who appeared disposed to profit by the occasion to
solve more doubts than one, “is it usual for the officers
of a vessel of war to appear armed among their
crew, in the manner I see here?”

“It is the pleasure of our Commander.”

“That Commander is evidently a skilful seaman,
but one whose caprices and tastes are as extraordinary
as I find his mien. I have surely seen him before;
and, it would seem, but lately.”

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

Mrs Wyllys then became silent for several minutes.
During the whole time, her eye never averted its
gaze from the form of the calm and motionless being,
who still maintained his attitude of repose, aloof
from all that throng who he had the address to
make so entirely dependant on his authority. It
seemed, for these few minutes, that the organs of the
governess drunk in the smallest peculiarity of his
person, and as if they would never tire of their gaze.
Then, drawing a heavy and relieving breath, she once
more remembered that she was not alone, and that
others were silently, but observantly, awaiting the
operation of her secret thoughts. Without manifesting
any embarrassment, however, at an absence
of mind that was far too common to surprise her pupil,
the governess resumed the discourse where she
had herself dropped it, bending her look again on
Wilder.

“Is Captain Heidegger, then, long of your acquaintance?”
she demanded.

“We have met before.”

“It should be a name of German origin, by the
sound. Certain I am that it is new to me. The time
has been when few officers, of his rank, in the service
of the King, were unknown to me, at least in
name. Is his family of long standing in England?”

“That is a question he may better answer himself,”
said Wilder, glad to perceive that the subject
of their discourse was approaching them, with the
air of one who felt that none in that vessel might
presume to dispute his right to mingle in any discourse
that should please his fancy. “For the moment,
Madam, my duty calls me elsewhere.”

Wilder evidently withdrew with reluctance; and,
had suspicion been active in the breasts of either of
his companions, they would not have failed to note
the glance of distrust with which he watched the
manner that his Commander assumed in paying the

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

salutations of the morning. There was nothing,
however, in the air of the Rover that should have
given ground to such jealous vigilance. On the contrary,
his manner, for the moment, was cold and abstracted,
and he appeared to mingle in their discourse,
much more from a sense of the obligations of hospitality,
than from any satisfaction that he might have
been thought to derive from the intercourse. Still,
his deportment was kind, and his voice bland as the
airs that were wafted from the healthful islands in
view.

“There is a sight”—he said, pointing towards the
low blue ridges of the land—“that forms the landsman's
delight, and the seaman's terror.”

“Are, then, seamen thus averse to the view of regions
where so many millions of their fellow creatures
find pleasure in dwelling?” demanded Gertrude,
(to whom he more particularly addressed his
words), with a frankness that would, in itself, have
sufficiently proved no glimmerings of his real character
had ever dawned on her own spotless and unsuspicious
mind.

“Miss Grayson included,” he returned, with a
slight bow, and a smile, in which, perhaps, irony was
concealed by playfulness. “After the risk you have
so lately run, even I, confirmed and obstinate seamonster
as I am, have no reason to complain of your
distaste for our element. And yet, you see, it is not
entirely without its charms. No lake, that lies within
the limits of yon Continent, can be more calm
and sweet than is this bit of ocean. Were we a few
degrees more southward, I would show you landscapes
of rock and mountain—of bays, and hill-sides
sprinkled with verdure—of tumbling whales,
and lazy fishermen, and distant cottages, and lagging
sails—such as would make a figure even in pages
that the bright eye of lady might love to read.”

“And yet for most of this would you be indebted

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

to the land. In return for your picture, I would take
you north, and show you black and threatening
clouds—a green and angry sea—shipwrecks and
shoals—cottages, hill-sides, and mountains, in the
imagination only of the drowning man—and sails
bleached by waters that contain the voracious shark,
or the disgusting polypus.”

Gertrude had answered in his own vein; but it
was too evident, by her pale cheek, and a slight tremour
about her full, rich lip, that memory was also
busy with its frightful images. The quick-searching
eye of the Rover was not slow to detect the change.
As though he would banish every recollection that
might give her pain, he artfully, but delicately, gave
a new direction to the discourse.

“There are people who think the sea has no
amusements,” he said. “To a pining, home-sick,
sea-sick miserable, this may well be true; but the
man who has spirit enough to keep down the qualms
of the animal may tell a different tale. We have our
balls regularly, for instance; and there are artists on
board this ship, who, though they cannot, perhaps,
make as accurate a right angle with their legs as the
first dancer of a leaping ballet, can go through their
figures in a gale of wind; which is more than can
be said of the highest jumper of them all on shore.”

“A ball, without females, would, at least, be
thought an unsocial amusement, with us uninstructed
people of terra firma.”

“Hum! It might be better for a lady or two.
Then, have we our theatre: Farce, comedy, and
the buskin, take their turns to help along the time.
Yon fellow, that you see lying on the fore-topsailyard,
like an indolent serpent basking on the branch
of a tree, will `roar you as gently as any sucking
dove!' And here is a votary of Momus, who would
raise a smile on the lips of a sea-sick friar: I believe
I can say no more in his commendation.”

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

“All this is well in the description,” returned Mrs
Wyllys; “but something is due to the merit of the—
poet, or, painter shall I term you?”

“Neither, but a grave and veritable chronologer.
However, since you doubt, and since you are so
new to the ocean”—

“Pardon me!” the lady gravely interrupted. “I
am, on the contrary, one who has seen much of it.”

The Rover, who had rather suffered his unsettled
glances to wander over the youthful countenance of
Gertrude than towards her companion, now bent his
eyes on the last speaker, where he kept them fastened
so long as to create some little embarrassment in
the subject of his gaze.

“You seem surprised that the time of a female
should have been thus employed,” she observed,
with a view to arouse his attention to the impropriety
of his observation.

“We were speaking of the sea, if I remember,”
he continued, like a man that was suddenly awakened
from a deep reverie. “Ay, I know it was of the
sea; for I had grown boastful in my panegyrics: I
had told you that this ship was faster than”—

“Nothing!” exclaimed Gertrude, laughing at his
blunder. “You were playing Master of Ceremonies
at a nautical ball!”

“Will you figure in a minuet? Shall I honour my
boards with the graces of your person?”

“Me, sir? and with whom? the gentleman who
knows so well the manner of keeping his feet in a
gale?”

“You were about to relieve any doubts we might
have concerning the amusements of seamen,” said
the governess, reproving the too playful spirit of her
pupil, by a glance of her own grave eye.

“Ay, it was the humour of the moment, nor will
I balk it.”

He then turned towards Wilder, who had posted

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

himself within ear-shot of what was passing, and
continued,—

“These ladies doubt our gaiety, Mr Wilder. Let
the boatswain give the magical wind of his call, and
pass the word `To mischief' among the people.”

Our adventurer bowed his acquiescence, and issued
the necessary order. In a few moments, the precise
individual who has already made acquaintance
with the reader, in the bar-room of the “Foul Anchor,”
appeared in the centre of the vessel, near the
main hatchway, decorated, as before, with his silver
chain and whistle, and accompanied by two mates,
who were humbler scholars of the same gruff school.
Then rose a long, shrill whistle from the instrument
of Nightingale, who, when the sound had died away
on the ear, uttered, in his deepest and least sonorous
tones,—

“All hands to mischief, ahoy!”

We have before had occasion to liken these sounds
to the muttering of a bull, nor shall we at present see
fit to disturb the comparison, since no other similitude,
so apt, presents itself. The example of the
boatswain was followed by each of his mates in
turn, and then the summons was deemed sufficient.
However unintelligible and grum the call might
sound in the musical ears of Gertrude, they produced
no unpleasant effects on the organs of a majority
of those who heard them. When the first swelling
and protracted note of the call mounted on the still
air, each idle and extended young seaman, as he lay
stretched upon a spar, or hung dangling from a ratling,
lifted his head, to catch the words that were to
follow, as an obedient spaniel pricks his ears to catch
the tones of his master. But no sonner had the emphatic
word, which preceded the long-drawn and
customary exclamation with which Nightingale closed
his summons, been pronounced, than the low
murmur of voices, which had so long been

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

maintained among the men, broke out in a simultaneous
and common shout. In an instant, every symptom
of lethargy disappeared in a general and extraordinary
activity. The young and nimble topmen bounded,
like leaping animals, into the rigging of their respective
masts, and were seen ascending the shaking
ladders of ropes as so many squirrels would hasten
to their holes at the signal of alarm. The graver and
heavier seamen of the forecastle, the still more important
quarter-gunners and quarter-masters, the less
instructed and half-startled waisters, and the raw and
actually alarmed after-guard, all hurried, by a sort
of instinct, to their several points; the more practised
to plot mischief against their shipmates, and the
less intelligent to concert their means of defence.

In an instant, the tops and yards were ringing with
laughter and loudly-uttered jokes, as each exulting
mariner aloft proclaimed his device to his fellows, or
urged his own inventions, at the expense of some less
ingenious mode of annoyance. On the other hand,
the distrustful and often repeated glances that were
thrown upward, from the men who had clustered on
the quarter-deck and around the foot of the mainmast,
sufficiently proclaimed the diffidence with
which the novices on deck were about to enter into
the contest of practical wit that was about to commence.
The steady and more earnest seamen forward,
however, maintained their places, with a species
of stern resolution which manifestly proved the
reliance they had on their physical force, and their
long familiarity with all the humours, no less than
with the dangers, of the ocean.

There was another little cluster of men, who assembled,
in the midst of the general clamour and
confusion, with a haste and steadiness that announced,
at the same time, both a consciousness of the entire
necessity of unity on the present occasion, and
the habit of acting in concert. These were the

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

drilled and military dependants of the General, between
whom, and the less artificial seamen, there existed
not only an antipathy that might almost be
called instinctive, but which, for obvious reasons,
had been so strongly encouraged in the vessel of
which we write, as often to manifest itself in turbulent
and nearly mutinous broils. About twenty in
number, they collected quickly; and, although obliged
to dispense with their fire-arms in such an amusement,
there was a sternness, in the visage of each of
the whiskered worthies, that showed how readily he
could appeal to the bayonet that was suspended from
his shoulder, should need demand it. Their Commander
himself withdrew, with the rest of the officers,
to the poop, in order that no incumbrance
might be given, by their presence, to the freedom of
the sports to which they had resigned the rest of the
vessel.

A couple of minutes might have been lost in producing
the different changes we have just related.
But, so soon as the topmen were sure that no unfortunate
laggard of their party was within reach of
the resentment of the different groupes beneath,
they commenced complying literally with the summons
of the boatswain, by plotting mischief.

Sundry buckets, most of which had been provided
for the extinction of fire, were quickly seen pendant
from as many whips on the outer extremity of the
different yards descending towards the sea. In spite
of the awkward opposition of the men below, these
leathern vessels were speedily filled, and in the
hands of those who had sent them down. Many
was the gaping waister, and rigid marine, who now
made a more familiar acquaintance with the element
on which he floated than suited either his convenience
or his humour. So long as the jokes were
confined to these semi-initiated individuals, the topmen
enjoyed their fun with impunity; but, the

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

instant the dignity of a quarter-gunner's person was
invaded, the whole gang of petty officers and forecastle-men
rose in a body to meet the insult, with a
readiness and dexterity that manifested how much
at home the elder mariners were with all that belonged
to their art. A little engine was transferred
to the head, and was then brought to bear on the
nearest top, like a well-planted battery clearing the
way for the opening battle. The laughing and chattering
topmen were soon dispersed: some ascending
beyond the power of the engine, and others retreating
into the neighbouring top, along ropes, and across
giddy heights, that would have seemed impracticable
to any animal less agile than a squirrel.

The marines were now summoned, by the successful
and malicious mariners, forward, to improve
their advantage. Thoroughly drenched already, and
eager to resent their wrongs, a half-dozen of the soldiers,
led on by a corporal, the coating of whose
powdered poll had been converted into a sort of
paste by too great an intimacy with a bucket of water,
essayed to mount the rigging; an exploit to them
much more arduous than to enter a breach. The
waggish quarter-gunners and quarter-masters, satisfied
with their own success, stimulated them to the
enterprise; and Nightingale and his mates, while they
rolled their tongues into their cheeks, gave forth, with
their whistles, the cheering sound of “heave away!”
The sight of these adventurers, slowly and cautiously
mounting the rigging, acted very much, on the
scattered topmen, in the manner that the appearance
of so many flies, in the immediate vicinity of
a web, is known to act on their concealed and rapacious
enemies. The sailors aloft saw, by expressive
glances from them below, that a soldier was
considered legal game. No sooner, therefore, had
the latter fairly entered into the toils, than twenty
topmen rushed out upon them, in order to make sure

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

of their prizes. In an incredibly short time, this
important result was achieved. Two or three of
the aspiring adventurers were lashed where they had
been found, utterly unable to make any resistance in
a spot where instinct itself seemed to urge them to
devote both hands to the necessary duty of holding
fast; while the rest were transferred, by the means
of whips, to different spars, very much as a light
sail or a yard would have been swayed into its place.

In the midst of the clamorous rejoicings that attended
this success, one individual made himself conspicuous
for the gravity and business-like air with
which he performed his part of the comedy. Seated
on the outer end of a lower yard, with as much
steadiness as though he had been placed on an ottoman,
he was intently occupied in examining into the
condition of a captive, who had been run up at his
feet, with an order from the waggish captain of the
top, “to turn him in for a jewel-block;” a name
that appears to have been taken from the precious
stones that are so often seen pendant from the ears
of the other sex.

“Ay, ay,” muttered this deliberate and gravelooking
tar, who was no other than Richard Fid,
“the stropping you've sent with the fellow is none
of the best; and, if he squeaks so now, what will he
do when you come to reeve a rope through him!
By the Lord, masters, you should have furnished the
lad a better outfit, if you meant to send him into
good company aloft. Here are more holes in his
jacket than there are cabin windows to a Chinese
junk. Hilloa!—on deck there!—you Guinea, pick
me up a tailor, and send him aloft, to keep the wind
out of this waister's tarpauling.”

The athletic African, who had been posted on the
forecastle for his vast strength, cast an eye upward,
and, with both arms thrust into his bosom, he rolled
along the deck, with just as serious a mien as though

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

he had been sent on a duty of the greatest import.
The uproar over his head had drawn a most helpless-looking
mortal from a retired corner of the
birth-deck, to the ladder of the forward hatch,
where, with a body half above the combings, a skein
of strong coarse thread around his neck, a piece of
bees-wax in one hand, and a needle in the other, he
stood staring about him, with just that sort of bewildered
air that a Chinese mandarin would manifest,
were he to be suddenly initiated in the mysteries of
the ballet. On this object the eye of Scipio fell.
Stretching out an arm, he cast him upon his shoulder;
and, before the startled subject of his attack knew
into whose hands he had fallen, a hook was passed
beneath the waistband of his trowsers, and he was
half way between the water and the spar, on his way
to join the considerate Fid.

“Have a care lest you let the man fall into the
sea!” cried Wilder sternly, from his stand on the
distant poop.

“He'm tailor, masser Harry,” returned the black,
without altering a muscle; “if a clothes no 'trong,
he nobody blame but heself.”

During this brief parlance, the good-man Homespun
had safely arrived at the termination of his lofty
flight. Here he was suitably received by Fid, who
raised him to his side; and, having placed him comfortably
between the yard and the boom, he proceeded
to secure him by a lashing that would give
the tailor the proper disposition of his hands.

“Bouse a bit on this waister!” called Richard,
when he had properly secured the good-man; “so;
belay all that.”

He then put one foot on the neck of his prisoner,
and, seizing his lower member as it swung uppermost,
he coolly placed it in the lap of the awe-struck
tailor.

“There, friend,” he said, “handle your needle

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

and palm now, as if you were at job-work. Your
knowing handicraft always begins with the foundation,
wherein he makes sure that his upper gear will
stand.”

“The Lord protect me, and all other sinful mortals,
from an untimely end!” exclaimed Homespun,
gazing at the vacant view from his giddy elevation,
with a sensation a little resembling that with which
the aeronaut, in his first experiment, regards the prospect
beneath.

“Settle away this waister,” again called Fid; “he
interrupts rational conversation by his noise; and,
as his gear is condemned by this here tailor, why,
you may turn him over to the purser for a new outfit.”

The real motive, however, for getting rid of his
pendant companion was a twinkling of humanity,
that still glimmered through the rough humour of the
tar, who well knew that his prisoner must hang,
where he did, at some little expense of bodily ease.
As soon as his request was complied with, he turned
to the good-man, to renew the discourse, with just
as much composure as though they were both seated
on the deck, or as if a dozen practical jokes, of the
same character, were not in the process of enactment,
in as many different parts of the vessel.

“What makes you open your eyes, brother, in this
port-hole fashion?” commenced the topman. “This
is all water that you see about you, except that hommoc
of blue in the eastern board, which is a morsel
of upland in the Bahamas, d'ye see.”

“A sinful and presuming world is this we live in!”
returned the good-man; “nor can any one tell at
what moment his life is to be taken from him. Five
bloody and cruel wars have I lived to see in safety,
and yet am I reserved to meet this disgraceful and
profane end at last.”

“Well, since you've had your luck in the wars,

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

you've the less reason to grumble at the bit of a
surge you may have felt in your garments, as they
run you up to this here yard-arm. I say, brother, I've
known stouter fellows take the same ride, who never
knew when or how they got down again.”

Homespun, who did not more than half comprehend
the allusion of Fid, now regarded him in a way
that announced some little desire for an explanation,
mingled with great admiration of the unconcern with
which his companion maintained his position, without
the smallest aid from any thing but his selfbalancing
powers.

“I say, brother,” resumed Fid, “that many a
stout seaman has been whipt up to the end of a yard,
who has started by the signal of a gun, and who has
staid there just as long as the president of a courtmartial
was pleased to believe might be necessary to
improve his honesty!”

“It would be a fearful and frightful trifling with
Providence, in the least offending and conscientious
mariner, to take such awful punishments in vain, by
acting them in his sports; but doubly so do I pronounce
it in the crew of a ship on which no man
can say at what hour retribution and compunction
are to alight. It seems to me unwise to tempt Providence
by such provocating exhibitions.”

Fid cast a glance of far more than usual significance
at the good-man, and even postponed his reply,
until he had freshened his ideas by an ample
addition to the morsel of weed which he had kept
all along thrust into one of his cheeks. Then, casting
his eyes about him, in order to see that none of his
noisy and riotous companions, of the top, were within
ear-shot, he fastened a still more meaning look on
the countenance of the tailor, as he responded,—

“Hark ye, brother; whatever may be the other
good points of Richard Fid, his friends cannot say
he is much of a scholar. This being the case, he has

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

not seen fit to ask a look at the sailing orders, on
coming aboard this wholesome vessel. I suppose,
howsomever, that they can be forthcoming at need,
and that no honest man need be ashamed to be found
cruising under the same.”

“Ah! Heaven protect such unoffending innocents
as serve here against their will, when the allotted
time of the cruiser shall be filled!” returned Homespun.
“I take it, however, that you, as a sea-faring
and understanding man, have not entered into this
enterprise without receiving the bounty, and knowing
the whole nature of the service.”

“The devil a bit have I entered at all, either in
the `Enterprise' or in the `Dolphin,' as they call this
same craft. There is master Harry, the lad on the
poop there, he who hails a yard as soft as a bullwhale
roars; I follow his signals, d'ye see; and it is
seldom that I bother him with questions as to what
tack he means to lay his boat on next.”

“What! would you sell your soul in this manner
to Beelzebub; and that, too, without a price?”

“I say, friend, it may be as well to overhaul your
ideas, before you let them slip, in this no-man's fashion,
from your tongue. I would wish to treat a gentleman,
who has come aloft to pay me a visit, with
such civility as may do credit to my top, though the
crew be at mischief, d'ye see. But an officer like
him I follow has a name of his own, without stop
ping to borrow one of the person you've just seen fit
to name. I scorn such a pitiful thing as a threat
but a man of your years needn't be told, that it is
just as easy to go down from this here spar as it was
to come up to it.”

The tailor cast a glance beneath him into the
brine, and hastened to do away the unfavourable im
pression which his last unfortunate interrogation had
so evidently left on the mind of his brawny associate.

“Heaven forbid that I should call any one but by

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

their given and family names, as the law commands,”
he said; “I meant merely to inquire, if you would
follow the gentleman you serve to so unseemly and
pernicious a place as a gibbet?”

Fid ruminated some little time, before he saw fit
to reply to so sweeping a query. During this unusual
process, he agitated the weed, with which his
mouth was nearly gorged, with great industry; and
then, terminating both processes, by casting a jet of
the juice nearly to the sprit-sail-yard, he said, in a
very decided tone,—

“If I wouldn't, may I be d—d! After sailing in
company for four-and-twenty years, I should be no
better than a sneak, to part company, because such
a trifle as a gallows hove in sight.”

“The pay of such a service should be both generous
and punctual, and the cheer of the most encouraging
character,” the good-man observed, in a
way that manifested he should not be displeased
were he to receive a reply. Fid was in no disposition
to balk his curiosity, but rather deemed himself
bound, since he had once entered on the subject, to
leave no part of it in obscurity.

“As for the pay, d'ye see,” he said, “it is seaman's
wages. I should despise myself to take less than
falls to the share of the best foremast-hand in a ship,
since it would be all the same as owning that I got
my deserts. But master Harry has a way of his
own in rating men's services; and if his ideas get
jamm'd in an affair of this sort, it is no marlingspike
that I handle which can loosen them. I once just
named the propriety of getting me a quarter-master's
birth; but devil the bit would he be doing the thing,
seeing, as he says himself, that I have a fashion of
getting a little hazy at times, which would only be
putting me in danger of disgrace; since every body
knows that the higher a monkey climbs in the rigging
of a ship, the easier every body on deck can

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

see that he has a tail. Then, as to cheer, it is seaman's
fare; sometimes a cut to spare for a friend,
and sometimes a hungry stomach.”

“But then there are often divisions of the—a—a—
the prize-money, in this successful cruiser?” demanded
the good-man, averting his face as he spoke,
perhaps from a consciousness that it might betray an
unseemly interest in the answer. “I dare say, you
receive amends for all your sufferings, when the
purser gives forth the spoils.”

“Hark ye, brother,” said Fid, again assuming a
look of significance, “can you tell me where the
Admiralty Court sits which condemns her prizes?”

The good-man returned the glance, with interest;
but an extraordinary uproar, in another part of the
vessel, cut short the dialogue, just as there was a rational
probability it might lead to some consolatory
explanations between the parties.

As the action of the tale is shortly to be set in motion
again, we shall refer the cause of the commotion
to the opening of the succeeding chapter.