“Mr Earing,” said Wilder, as the seaman reluctantly proceeded towards his place of rest, “we will bring the ship upon the other tack, and get more easting, while the land is so far from us.  This course will be setting us upon Hatteras.  Besides”——­

“Yes, sir,” the mate replied, observing his superior to hesitate, “as you were saying,—­besides, no one can foretel the length of a gale, nor the real quarter it may come from.”

“Precisely.  No one can answer for the weather.  The men are scarcely in their hammocks; turn them up at once, sir, before their eyes are heavy, and we will bring the ship’s head the other way.”

The mate instantly sounded the well-known cry, which summoned the watch below to the assistance of their shipmates on the deck.  Little delay occurred, and not a word was uttered, but the short, authoritative mandates which Wilder saw fit to deliver from his own lips.  No longer pressed up against the wind, the ship, obedient to her helm, gracefully began to incline her head from the waves, and to bring the wind abeam.  Then, instead of breasting and mounting the endless hillocks, like a being that toiled heavily along its path, she fell into the trough of the sea, from which she issued like a courser, who, have conquered an ascent, shoots along the track with redoubled velocity.  For an instant the wind appear ed to have lulled, though the wide ridge of foam which rolled along on each side the vessel’s bows, sufficiently proclaimed that she was skimming lightly before it.  In another moment, the tall spars began to incline again to the west, and the vessel came swooping up to the wind, until her plunges and shocks against the seas were renewed as violently as before.  When every yard and sheet were properly trimmed to meet the new position of the vessel, Wilder turned anxiously to get a glimpse of the stranger.  A minute was lost in ascertaining the precise spot where he ought to appear; for, in such a chaos of water, and with no guide but the judgment, the eye was apt to deceive itself, by referring to the nearer and more familiar objects by which the spectator was surrounded.

“The stranger has vanished!” said Earing, with a voice in whose tones mental relief and distrust were both, at the same moment, oddly manifesting themselves.

“He should be on this quarter; but I confess I see him not!”

“Ay, ay, sir; this is the way that the midnight cruiser off the Hope is said to come and go.  There are men who have seen that vessel shut in by a fog, in as fine a star-light night as was ever met in a southern latitude.  But then this cannot be the Dutchman, since it is so many long leagues from the pitch of the Cape to the coast of North-America.

“Here he lies; and, by heaven! he has already gone about!” cried Wilder.