“It is the latter; at least I, for one, should think it so, since I learned my trade in the same service.”

“In what ship?” eagerly interrupted Wilder.

“In many,” was the cold reply.  “But, speaking of rigid rules, you will soon perceive, that, in a service where there are no courts on shore to protect us, nor any sister-cruisers to look after each other’s welfare, no small portion of power is necessarily vested in the Commander.  You find my authority a good deal extended.”

“A little unlimited,” said Wilder, with a smile that might have passed for ironical.

“I hope you will have no occasion to say that it is arbitrarily executed,” returned the Rover, without observing, or perhaps without letting it appear that he observed, the expression of his companion’s countenance.  “But your hour is come, and you are now at liberty to land.”

The young man thanked him, with a courteous inclination of the head, and expressed his readiness to go.  As they ascended the ladder into the upper cabin, the Captain expressed his regret that the hour, and the necessity of preserving the incognito of his ship, would not permit him to send an officer of his rank ashore in the manner he could wish.

“But then there is the skiff, in which you came off, still alongside, and your own two stout fellows will soon twitch you to yon point.  A propos of those two men, are they included in our arrangements?”

“They have never quitted me since my childhood, and would not wish to do it now.”

“It is a singular tie that unites two men, so oddly constituted, to one so different, by habits and education, from themselves,” returned the Rover, glancing his eye keenly at the other, and withdrawing it the instant he perceived his interest in the answer was observed.

“It is,” Wilder calmly replied; “but, as we are all seamen, the difference is not so great as one would at first imagine.  I will now join them, and take an opportunity to let them, know that they are to serve in future under your orders.”

The Rover suffered him to leave the cabin, following to the quarter-deck, with a careless step, as if he had come abroad to breathe the open air of the night.

The weather had not changed, but it still continued dark, though mild.  The same stillness as before reigned on the decks of the ship; and nowhere, with a solitary exception, was a human form to be seen, amid the collection of dark objects that rose on the sight, all of which Wilder well understood to be necessary fixtures in the vessel.  The exception was the same individual who had first received our adventurer, and who still paced the quarter-deck, wrapped, as before, in a watch-coat.  To this personage the youth now addressed himself, announcing his intention temporarily to quit the vessel.  His communication was received with a respect that satisfied him his new rank was already known, although, as it would seem, it was to be made to succumb to the superior authority of the Rover.