“Mr Wilder,” he said quickly, and with an air of decision, “you know the ship?”

“I’ll not deny it.  If my opinion be true, she will be found too heavy for the ‘Dolphin,’ and a vessel that offers little inducement for us to attempt to carry.”

“Her size?”

“You heard it from the black.”

“Your followers know her also?”

“It would be difficult to deceive a topman in the cut and trim of sails among which he has passed months, nay years.”

“I understand the ‘new cloths’ in her top-gallant-royal!  Mr Wilder, your departure from that vessel has been recent?”

“As my arrival in this.”

The Rover continued silent for several minutes communing with his own thoughts.  His companion made no offer to disturb his meditations; though the furtive glances, he often cast in the direction of the other’s musing eye, betrayed some little anxiety to learn the result of his self-communication.

“And her guns?” at length his Commander abruptly demanded.

“She numbers four more than the ‘Dolphin.’”

“The metal?”

“Is still heavier.  In every particular is she a ship a size above your own.”

“Doubtless she is the property of the King?”

“She is.”

“Then shall she change her masters.  By heaven she shall be mine!”

Wilder shook his head, answering only with an incredulous smile.

“You doubt it,” resumed the Rover.  “Come hither, and look upon that deck.  Can he whom you so lately quitted muster fellows like these, to do his biddings?”

The crew of the ‘Dolphin’ had been chosen, by one who thoroughly understood the character of a seaman, from among all the different people of the Christian world.  There was not a maritime nation in Europe which had not its representative among; that band of turbulent and desperate spirits.  Even the descendant of the aboriginal possessors of America had been made to abandon the habits and opinions of his progenitors, to become a wanderer on that element which had laved the shores of his native land for ages, without exciting a wish to penetrate its mysteries in the bosoms of his simple-minded ancestry.  All had been suited, by lives of wild adventure, on the two elements, for their present lawless pursuits and, directed by the mind which had known how to obtain and to continue its despotic ascendancy over their efforts, they truly formed a most dangerous and (considering their numbers) resistless crew.  Their Commander smiled in exultation, as he watched the evident reflection with which his companion contemplated the indifference, or fierce joy, which different individuals among them exhibited at the appearance of an approaching conflict.  Even the rawest of their numbers, the luckless waisters and after-guard, were apparently as confident of victory as those whose audacity might plead the apology of uniform and often repeated success.