ne or two of them have been particularly troublesome of
late hereabouts."

Turning for a moment to bid adieu to the fair lady passenger on the
quarter-deck, and recovering his sword after a playful struggle with the
youngster, he buckled it around his waist, and, stepping lightly over
the side and into the boat, the oars fell with a single splash, and the
cutter shot rapidly away toward the corvette.

CHAPTER IV.

SUNSET.

"Light is amid the gloomy canvas spreading,
The moon is whitening the dusky sails,
From the thick bank of clouds she masters, shedding
The softest influence that o'er night prevails.
Pale is she, like a young queen pale with splendor,
Haunted with passionate thoughts too fond, too deep;
The very glory that she wears is tender,
The very eyes that watch her beauty fain would weep."

Not a breath from the lungs of Aeolus. The sun went down like a globe of
fire; but just as it touched the horizon it flattened out into an oval
disk, and, sinking behind a dead, slate-colored cloud, shot up half a
dozen broad rose and purple bands, expanding as they mounted heavenward,
and then fading away in pearly-tinted hues in the softening twilight
until it mingled in the light of the half moon nearly at the zenith.
There lay the island, too, now all clear again, with the blue tops of
the mountains marked in pure distinct outline, and falling away from
peak to peak on either hand, till the sea flashed up in sluggish creamy
foam at the base. The man-of-war birds came floating in from seaward,
high up, like black musquitoes, with their pointed wings wide spread and
heading toward the land, but now with never a quiver to their silent
pinions. A school of porpoises, too, broke water from the opposite
direction, and, crossing and recrossing each other's track, came leaping
and puffing over the gentle swells until they struck the brig's wake,
when they wheeled around her bows, dashed off on a swift visit to the
corvette, and then, closing up in watery phalanx, went gamboling,
leaping, and breaking water again to windward. Presently, along the
eastern horizon, the banks of clouds, which had been lying dead and
motionless all the sultry day, seemed to be imbued with life, and,
separating in their fleecy masses, mounted up above the sea, and soon
spread out, like a lady's fan, in all directions.

"Ho! ho!" shouted Captain Blunt, clapping his hands, "what said I,
Madame Ros