“He’m just seven hundred and fifty tons, masser.”

“How’s this!  The tongue of your negro, Mr. Wilder, is as exact as a carpenter’s rule.  The fellow speaks of the size of a vessel, that is hull down, with an air as authoritative as a runner of the King’s customs could pronounce on the same, after she had been submitted to the office admeasurement.”

“You will have consideration for the ignorance of the black; men of his unfortunate state are seldom skilful in answering interrogatories.”

“Ignorance!” repeated the Rover, glancing his eye uneasily, and with a rapidity peculiar to himself, from one to the other, and from both to the rising object in the horizon:  “Skilful!  I know not:  The man has no air of doubt.—­You think her tonnage to be precisely that which you have said?”

The large dark eyes of Scipio roiled, in turn, from his new Commander to his ancient master, while, for a moment, his faculties appeared to be lost in inextricable confusion.  But the uncertainty continued only for a moment.  He no sooner read the frown that was gathering deeply over the brow of the latter, than the air of confidence with which he had pronounced his former opinion vanished in a look of obstinacy so settled, that one might well have despaired of ever driving, or enticing, him again to seem to think.

“I ask you, if the stranger may not be a dozen tons larger or smaller than what you have named?” continued the Rover, when he found his former question was not likely to be soon answered.

“He’m just as masser wish ’em,” returned Scipio.

“I wish him a thousand; since he will then prove the richer prize.”

“I s’pose he’m quite a t’ousand, sir.”

“Or a snug ship of three hundred, if lined with gold, might do.”

“He look berry like a t’ree hundred.”

“To me it seems a brig.”

“I t’ink him brig too, masser.”

“Or possibly, after all, the stranger may prove a schooner, with many lofty and light sails.”

“A schooner often carry a royal,” returned the black, resolute to acquiesce in all the other said.

“Who knows it is a sail at all!  Forward there!  It may be well to have more opinions than one on so weighty a matter.  Forward there! send the foretop-man that is called Fid upon the poop.  Your companions are so intelligent and so faithful, Mr. Wilder, that you are not to be surprised if I shew an undue desire for their information.”

Wilder compressed his lips, and the rest of the groupe manifested a good deal of amazement; but the latter had been too long accustomed to the caprice of their Commander, and the former was too wise, to speak at a moment when his humour seemed at the highest.  The topman, however, was not long in making his appearance, and then the chief saw fit again to break the silence.

“And you think it questionable whether it be a sail at all?” he continued.