in the pretended slaver.  She lay in the same deep, beautiful, but treacherous quiet, as that in which she had reposed throughout the whole of the eventful morning.  But a solitary individual could be seen amid the mazes of her rigging, or along the wide reach of all her spars.  It was a seaman seated on the extremity of a lower yard, where he appeared to busy himself with one of those repairs that are so constantly required in the gear of a large ship.  As the man was placed on the weather side of his own vessel, Wilder instantly conceived the idea that he was thus stationed to cast a grapnel into the rigging of the “Caroline,” should such a measure become necessary, in order to bring the two ships foul of each other.  With a view to prevent so rude an encounter, he instantly determined to defeat the plan.  Calling to the pilot, he told him the attempt to pass to windward was of very doubtful success, and reminded him that the safer way would be to go to leeward.

“No fear, no fear, Captain,” returned the stubborn conductor of the ship, who, as his authority was so brief, was only the more jealous of its unrestrained exercise, and who, like an usurper of the throne, felt a jealousy of the more legitimate power which he had temporarily dispossessed; “no fear of me, Captain.  I have trolled over this ground oftener than you have crossed the ocean, and I know the name of every rock on the bottom, as well as the town-crier knows the streets of Newport.  Let her luff, boy; luff her into the very eye of the wind; luff, you can”——­

“You have the ship shivering as it is, sir,” said Wilder, sternly:  “Should you get us foul of the slaver who is to pay the cost?”

“I am a general underwriter,” returned the opinionated pilot; “my wife shall mend every hole I make in your sails, with a needle no bigger than a hair, and with such a palm as a fairy’s thimble!”

“This is fine talking, sir, but you are already losing the ship’s way; and, before you have ended your boasts, she will be as fast in irons as a condemned thief.  Keep the sails full, boy; keep them a rap full, sir.”

“Ay, ay, keep her a good full,” echoed the pilot, who, as the difficulty of passing to windward became at each instant more obvious, evidently began to waver in his resolution.  “Keep her full-and-by,—­I have always told you full-and-by,—­I don’t know, Captain, seeing that the wind has hauled a little, but we shall have to pass to leeward yet; but you will acknowledge, that, in such case, we shall be obliged to go about.”

Now, in point of fact, the wind, though a little lighter than it had been, was, if anything, a trifle more favourable; nor had Wilder ever, in any manner, denied that the ship would not have to tack, some twenty minutes sooner, by going to leeward of the other vessel, than if she had succeeded in her delicate experiment of passing on the more honourable side; but, as the vulgarest minds are always the most reluctant to confess their blunders, the discomfited pilot was disposed to qualify the concession he found himself compelled to make, by some salvo of the sort, that he might not lessen his reputation for foresight, among his auditors.