“He was a bold mariner, that trader, to go so nigh such a merciless rogue.”

“I warrant you, Pardon, it was desperately against his will!  But it was on a night so dark—­”

“Dark!” interrupted the other; by what contrivance then did he manage to see so well?”

“No man can say!” answered the tailor, “but see he did, just in the manner, and the very things I have named to you.  More than that, he took good note of the vessel, that he might know her, if chance, or Providence, should ever happen to throw her again into his way.  She was a long, black ship, lying low in the water, like a snake in the grass, with a desperate wicked look, and altogether of dishonest dimensions.  Then, every body says that she appears to sail faster than the clouds above, seeming to care little which way the wind blows, and that no one is a jot safer from her speed than her honesty.  According to all that I have heard, she is something such a craft as yonder slaver, that has been lying the week past, the Lord knows why, in our outer harbour.”

As the gossipping tailor had necessarily lost many precious moments, in relating the preceding history he now set about redeeming them with the utmost diligence, keeping time to the rapid movement of his needle-hand, by corresponding jerks of his head and shoulders.  In the meanwhile, the bumpkin, whose wondering mind was by this time charged nearly to bursting with what he had heard, turned his look towards the vessel the other had pointed out, in order to get the only image that was now required, to enable him to do fitting credit to so moving a tale, suitably engraved on his imagination.  There was necessarily a pause, while the respective parties were thus severally occupied.  It was suddenly broken by the tailor, who clipped the thread with which he had just finished the garment, cast every thing from his hands, threw his spectacles upon his forehead, and, leaning his arms on his knees in such a manner as to form a perfect labyrinth with the limbs, he stretched his body forward so far as to lean out of the window, riveting his eyes also on the ship, which still attracted the gaze of his companion.

“Do you know, Pardy,” he said, “that strange thoughts and cruel misgivings have come over me concerning that very vessel?  They say she is a slaver come in for wood and water, and there she has been a week, and not a stick bigger than an oar has gone up her side, and I’ll engage that ten drops from Jamaica have gone on board her, to one from the spring.  Then you may see she is anchored in such a way that but one of the guns from the battery can touch her; whereas, had she been a real timid trader, she would naturally have got into a place where, if a straggling picaroon should come into the port, he would have found her in the very hottest of the fire.”

“You have an ingenious turn with you, good-man,” returned the wondering countryman; “now a ship might have lain on the battery island itself, and I would have hardly noticed the thing.”