“When a ship has a certain sort of Captain, one is not to be surprised at any thing,” he answered the instant his significant merriment had ceased.  “For my own part, I shipped to go from Bristol to the Carolinas and Jamaica, touching at Newport out and home; and I will say, boldly, I have no wish to go any where else.  As to backing the ‘Caroline’ from her awkward birth alongside the slaver, why it was well done; most too well for so young a manner.  Had I done the thing myself, it could not have been much better.  But what think you, brothers of the old man in the skiff?  There was a chase, and an escape, such as few old sea-dogs have the fortune to behold!  I have heard of a smuggler that was chased a hundred times by his Majesty’s cutters, in the chops of the Channel, and which always had a fog handy to run into, but out of which no man could truly say he ever saw her come again!  This skiff may have plied between the land and that Guernseyman, for any thing I know to the contrary; but it is not a boat I wish to pull a scull in.”

“That was a remarkable flight!” exclaimed the elder seaman, whose faith in the character of our adventurer began to give way gradually, before such an accumulation of testimony.

“I call it so; though other men may possibly know better than I, who have only followed the water five-and-thirty years.  Then, here is the sea getting up, in an unaccountable manner! and look at these rags of clouds, which darken the heavens! and yet there is light enough, coming from the ocean, for a good scholar to read by!”

“I’ve often seen the weather as it is now.”

“Ay, who has not?  It is seldom that any man, let him come from what part he will, makes his first voyage as Captain.  Let who will be out to-night upon the water, I’ll engage he has been there before.  I have seen worse looking skies, and even worse looking water, than this; but I never knew any good come of either.  The night I was wreck’d in the bay of”——­

“In the waist there!” cried the calm, authoritative tones of Wilder.

Had a warning voice arisen from the turbulent and rushing ocean itself, it would not have sounded more alarming, in the startled ears of the conscious seamen, than this sudden hail.  Their young Commander found it necessary to repeat it, before even Nighthead, the proper and official spokesman, could muster resolution to answer.

“Get the fore-top-gallant-sail on the ship, sir,” continued Wilder, when the customary reply let him know that he had been heard.

The mate and his companions regarded each other, for a moment, in dull admiration; and many a melancholy shake of the head was exchanged, before one of the party threw himself into the weather-rigging, and proceeded aloft, with a doubting mind, in order to loosen the sail in question.