e--as you are a gentleman, will
you try and get me off when we get to Jamaica? Secondly, will you
promise dat you will not seek to know more of de vessel you may go in,
nor of her crew, than dey are willing to tell you, provided you are
landed safe?"

"Why, Peter, I scarcely think you would deceive us, for you know I saved
your bacon in that awkward affair, when through drunkenness you plumped
the Torch ashore, so----"

"Forget dat, sir--forget dat! Never shall poor black pilot forget how
you saved him from being seized up, when de gratings, boatswain's mates,
and all, were ready at de gangway--never shall poor black rascal forget
dat."

"Indeed, I do not think you would wittingly betray us into trouble,
Peter; and as I guess you mean one of the forced traders, we will
venture in her, rather than kick about here any longer, and pay a
moderate sum for our passage."

"Den wait here five minute"--and so saying, he slipped down through the
embrasure into a canoe that lay beneath, and in a trice we saw him jump
on board of a long low nondescript kind of craft that lay moored within
pistol-shot of the walls.

She was a large shallow vessel, coppered to the bends, of great breadth
of beam, with bright sides, like an American, so painted as to give her
a clumsy mercantile sheen externally, but there were many things that
belied this to a nautical eye: her copper, for instance, was bright as
burnished gold on her very sharp bows and beautiful run; and we could
see, from the bastion where we stood, that her decks were flush and
level. She had no cannon mounted that were visible; but we distinguished
grooves on her well-scrubbed decks, as from the recent traversing of
carronade slides, while the bolts and rings in her high and solid
bulwarks shone clear and bright in the ardent noontide. There was a
tarpaulin stretched over a quantity of rubbish, old sails, old junk, and
hencoops, rather ostentatiously piled up forward, which we conjectured
might conceal a long gun.

She was a very taught-rigged hermaphrodite, or brig forward and schooner
aft. Her foremast and bowsprit were immensely strong and heavy, and her
mainmast was so long and tapering, that the wonder was how the few
shrouds and stays about it could support it; it was the handsomest stick
we had ever seen. Her upper spars were on the same scale, tapering away
through topmast, topgallant-mast, royal and skysail-masts, until they
fined away into slender wands. The sa