“Now must we, too, part.  I commend my wounded to your care.  They are necessarily with your surgeons.  I know the trust I give you will not be abused.”

“My word is the pledge of their safety,” returned the young de Lacey.

“I believe you.—­Lady,” he added, approaching the elder of the females, with an air in which earnestness and hesitation strongly contended, “if a proscribed and guilty man may still address you, grant yet a favour.”

“Name it; a mother’s ear can never be deaf to him who has spared her child.”

“When you petition Heaven for that child, then forget not there is another being who may still profit by your prayers!—­No more.—­And now,” he continued looking about him like one who was determined to be equal to the pang of the moment, however difficult it might prove, and surveying, with an eye of painful regret, those naked decks which were so lately teeming with scenes of life and revelry; “and now—­ay—­now we part!  The boat awaits you.”

Wilder had soon seen his mother and Gertrude into the pinnace; but he still lingered on the deck himself.

“And you!” he said, “what will become of you?”

“I shall shortly be—­forgotten.—­Adieu!”

The manner in which the Rover spoke forbade delay.  The young man hesitated, squeezed his hand, and left him.

When Wilder found himself restored to his proper vessel, of which the death of Bignall had left him in command, he immediately issued the order to fill her sails, and to steer for the nearest haven of his country.  So long as sight could read the movements of the man who remained on the decks of the “Dolphin” not a look was averted from the still motionless object.  She lay, with her maintop-sail to the mast, stationary as some beautiful fabric placed there by fairy power, still lovely in her proportions, and perfect in all her parts.  A human form was seen swiftly pacing her poop, and, by its side, glided one who looked like a lessened shadow of that restless figure.  At length distance swallowed these indistinct images; and then the eye was wearied, in vain, to trace the internal movements of the distant ship But doubt was soon ended.  Suddenly a streak of flame flashed from her decks, springing fiercely from sail to sail.  A vast cloud of smoke broke out of the hull, and then came the deadened roar of artillery.  To this succeeded, for a time, the awful, and yet attractive spectacle of a burning ship.  The whole was terminated by an immense canopy of smoke, and an explosion that caused the sails of the distant “Dart” to waver, as though the winds of the trades were deserting their eternal direction.  When the cloud had lifted from the ocean, an empty waste of water was seen beneath; and none might mark the spot where so lately had floated that beautiful specimen of human ingenuity.  Some of those who ascended to the upper masts of the cruiser, and were aided by glasses, believed, indeed, they could discern a solitary speck upon the sea; but whether it was a boat, or some fragment of the wreck, was never known.