“There is not another:  This boat, and its contents are the sole memorials of the ‘Royal Caroline!’”

“It was not within the ken of human Knowledge to foresee this evil,” continued the governess, fastening her eye on the countenance of Wilder, as though she would ask a question which conscience told her, at the same time, betrayed a portion of that very superstition which had hastened the fate of the rude being they had so lately passed.

“It was not.”

“And the danger, to which you so often and so inexplicably alluded, had no reference to this we have incurred?”

“It had not.”

“It has gone, with the change in our situation?”

“I hope it has.”

“See!” interrupted Gertrude, laying a hand, in her haste, on the arm of Wilder.  “Heaven be praised! yonder is something at last to relieve the view.”

“It is a ship!” exclaimed her governess; but, an envious wave lifting its green side between them and the object, they sunk into a trough, as though the vision had been placed momentarily before their eyes, merely to taunt them with its image.  The quick glance of Wilder had caught, however, a glimpse of the tracery against the heavens, as they descended.  When the boat rose again, his look was properly directed, and he was enabled to be certain of the reality of the vessel.  Wave succeeded wave, and moments followed moments, during which the stranger was given to their gaze, and as often disappeared, as the launch unavoidably fell into the troughs of the seas.  These short and hasty glimpses sufficed, however, to convey all that was necessary to the eye of a man who had been nurtured on that element, where circumstances now exacted of him such constant and unequivocal evidences of his skill.

At the distance of a mile, there was in fact a ship to be seen, rolling and pitching gracefully, and without any apparent effort, on those waves through which the launch was struggling with such difficulty.  A solitary sail was set, to steady the vessel, and that so reduced, by reefs, as to look like a little snowy cloud amid the dark maze of rigging and spars.  At times, her long and tapering masts appeared pointing to the zenith, or even rolling as if inclining against the wind; and then, again, with slow and graceful sweeps, they seemed to fall towards the ruffled surface of the ocean, as though about to seek refuge from their endless motion, in the bosom of the agitated element itself.  There were moments when the long, low, and black hull was seen distinctly resting on the summit of a sea, and glittering in the sun-beams, as the water washed from her sides; and then, as boat and vessel sunk together, all was lost to the eye, even to the attenuated lines of her tallest and most delicate spars.

Both Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude bowed their faces to their knees, when assured of the truth of their hopes, and poured out their gratitude in silent and secret thanksgivings.  The joy of Cassandra was more clamorous, and less restrained.  The simple negress laughed, shed tears, and exulted in the most touching manner, on the prospect that was now offered for the escape of her young mistress and herself from a death that the recent sight had set before her imagination in the most frightful form.  But no answering look of congratulation was to be traced in the contracting and anxious eye of their companion.