in', at least."

At this Claude was again silent for some time, thinking to himself
whether the possibility of a French ship being near was to be wished
or dreaded. Much was to be said on both sides. To himself it would,
perhaps, be desirable; yet not so to Zac, although he tried to
reassure the dejected skipper by telling him that if a French vessel
should really be so near, it would be all the better, since his
voyage would thereby be made all the shorter, for he himself could go
aboard, and the Parson might return to Boston. But Zac refused to be
so easily comforted.

"No," said he; "once I git into their clutches, they'll never let me
go; and as for the poor old Parson, why, they'll go an' turn her into
a Papist priest. And that," he added, with a deep sigh, "would be
too--almighty--bad!"

Claude now found that Zac was in too despondent a mood to listen to
what he called reason, and therefore he held his tongue. The idea
that a French ship might be somewhere near, behind that wall of fog,
had in it something which to him was not unpleasant, since it
afforded some variety to the monotony of his situation. He stood,
therefore, in silence, with his face turned towards the direction
indicated by Zac, and listened intently, while the skipper stood in
silence by his side, listening also.

There was no wind whatever. The water was quite smooth, and the
Parson rose and fell at the slow undulations of the long ocean
rollers, while at every motion the spars creaked and the sails
flapped idly. All around there arose a gray wall of fog, deep, dense,
and fixed, which shut them in on every side, while overhead the sky
itself was concealed from view by the same dull-gray canopy. Behind
that wall of fog anything might lie concealed; the whole French fleet
might be there, without those on board the Parson being anything the
wiser. This Claude felt, and as he thought of the possibility of
this, he began to see that Zac's anxiety was very well founded, and
that if the Parson should be captured it would be no easy task to
deliver her from the grasp of the captor. Still there came no further
sounds, and Claude, after listening for a long time without hearing
anything, began, at length, to conclude that Zac had been deceived.

"Don't you think," he asked, "that it may, after all, have been the
rustle of the sails, or the creaking of the spars?"

Zac shook his head.

"No," said he; "I've heerd it twice; an' I know very well all t