“We see nothing,” said Gertrude, when Wilder again stopped in his walk, and once more gazed, as before, on the seeming void.

“Look!” he answered, directing their eyes with his finger:  “Is there nothing there?”

“Nothing.”

“You look into the sea.  Here, just where the heavens and the waters meet; along that streak of misty light, into which the waves are tossing themselves, like little hillocks on the land.  There; now ’tis smooth again, and my eyes did not deceive me.  By heavens, it is a ship!”

“Sail, ho!” shouted a voice, from out atop, which sounded in the ears of our adventurer like the croaking of some sinister spirit, sweeping across the deep.

“Whereaway?” was the stern demand.

“Here on our lee-quarter, sir,” returned the seaman at the top of his voice.  “I make her out a ship close-hauled; but, for an hour past, she has looked more like mist than a vessel.”

“Ay, he is right,” muttered Wilder; “and yet ’tis a strange thing that a ship should be just there.”

“And why stranger than that we are here?”

“Why!” said the young man, regarding Mrs Wyllys, who had put this question, with a perfectly unconscious eye.  “I say, ’tis strange she should be there.  I would she were steering northward.”

“But you give no reason.  Are we always to have warnings from you,” she continued, with a smile, “without reasons?  Do you deem us so utterly unworthy of a reason? or do you think us incapable of thought on a subject connected with the sea?  You have failed to make the essay, and are too quick to decide.  Try us this once.  We may possibly deceive your expectations.”

Wilder laughed faintly, and bowed, as if he recollected himself.  Still he entered into no explanation; but again turned his gaze on the quarter of the ocean where the strange sail was said to be.  The females followed his example, but ever with the same want of success.  As Gertrude expressed her disappointment aloud, the soft tones of the complainant found their way to the ears of our adventurer.

“You see the streak of dim light,” he said, again pointing across the waste.  “The clouds have lifted a little there, but the spray of the sea is floating between us and the opening.  Her spars look like the delicate work of a spider, against the sky, and yet you see there are all the proportions, with the three masts, of a noble ship.”

Aided by these minute directions, Gertrude at length caught a glimpse of the faint object, and soon succeeded in giving the true direction to the look of her governess also.  Nothing was visible but the dim outline, not unaptly described by Wilder himself assembling a spider’s web.

“It must be a ship!” said Mrs Wyllys; “but at a vast distance.”

“Hum!  Would it were farther.  I could wish that vessel any where but there.”

“And why not there?  Have you reason to dread an enemy has been waiting for us in this particular spot?”