as these movements caught his eye, that Wilder seemed to be thoroughly awakened from his abstraction, and to pursue his observations with an undivided mind.  He saw the seamen ascend the rigging, in that lazy manner which is so strongly contrasted by their activity in moments of need; and here and there a human form was showing itself on the black and ponderous yards.  In a few moments, the fore-topsail fell, from its compact compass on the yard, into graceful and careless festoons.  This, the attentive Wilder well knew, was, among all trading vessels, the signal of sailing.  In a few more minutes, the lower angles of this important sail were drawn to the, extremities of the corresponding spar beneath; and then the heavy yard was seen slowly ascending the mast, dragging after it the opening folds of the sail, until the latter was tightened at all its edges, and displayed itself in one broad, snow-white sheet of canvas.  Against this wide surface the light currents of air fell, and as often receded; the sail bellying and collapsing in a manner to show that, as yet, they were powerless.  At this point the preparations appeared suspended, as if the mariners, having thus invited the breeze, were awaiting to see if their invocation was likely to be attended with success.

It was perhaps but a natural transition for him, who so closely observed these indications of departure in the ship so often named, to turn his eyes on the vessel which lay without the fort, in order to witness the effect so manifest a signal had produced in her, also.  But the closest and the keenest scrutiny could have detected no sign of any bond of interest between the two.  While the firmer was making the movements just described, the latter lay at her anchors without the smallest proof that man existed within the mass of her black and inanimate hull.  So quiet and motionless did she seem, that one, who had never been instructed in the matter, might readily have believed her a fixture in the sea, some symmetrical and enormous excrescence thrown up by the waves, with its mazes of lines and pointed fingers, or one of those fantastic monsters that are believed to exist in the bottom of the ocean, darkened by the fogs and tempests of ages.  But, to the understanding eye of Wilder, she exhibited a very different spectacle.  He easily saw, through all this apparently drowsy quietude, those signs of readiness which a seaman only might discover.  The cable, instead of stretching in a long declining line towards the water was “short,” or nearly “up and down,” as it is equally termed in technical language, just “scope” enough being allowed out-board to resist the power of the lively tide, which acted on the deep keel of the vessel.  All her boats were in the water, and so disposed and prepared, as to convince him they were in a state to be employed in towing, in the shortest possible time.  Not a sail, nor a yard, was out of its place, undergoing those repairs and examinations which the mariner is wont to make so often, when lying