cident
surround itself with a certain supernatural element, until, at
length, he began to fancy that his senses might have deceived him.
Yet he knew this had not been the case. Zac had heard the voice as
well as he, and the words to him had been perfectly plain. _Put her
head a little over this way_! Singular words, too, they seemed to be,
as he turned them over in his mind. Under other circumstances they
might have been regarded as perfectly commonplace, but now the
surroundings gave them the possibility of a varied interpretation.
Who was the "her"? What was meant? Was it a ship or a woman? What
could the meaning be? Or, again, might not this have been some
supernatural voice speaking to them from the Unseen, and conveying to
them some sentence either of good or evil omen, giving them some
direction, perhaps, about the course of the schooner in which he was?

Not that Claude was what is called a superstitious man. From ordinary
superstition he was, indeed, quite as free as any man of his age or
epoch; not was he even influenced by any of the common superstitious
fancies then prevalent. But still there is a natural belief in the
unseen which prevails among all men, and Claude's fancy was busy,
being stimulated by this incident, so that, as he endeavored to
account for it, he was as easily drawn towards a supernatural theory
as to a natural one. Hundreds of miles from land, on the broad ocean,
a voice had sounded from behind the impenetrable cloud, and it was
scarcely to be wondered at that he considered it something unearthly.

Under other circumstances Zac might also have yielded to
superstitious fancies; but as it was, his mind had been too
completely filled with the one absorbing idea of the French fleet to
find room for any other thought. It was not an unsubstantial ghost
which Zac dreaded, but the too substantial form of some frigate
looming through the fog, and firing a gun to bring him on board.
Every additional moment of silence gave him a feeling of relief, for
he felt that these moments, as they passed, drew him away farther
from the danger that had been so near.

At length a new turn came to the current of affairs. A puff of wind
suddenly filled the sails, and at its first breath Zac started up
with a low chuckle.

"I'd give ten guineas," said he, "for one good hooray--I would, by
George! But bein' as it is, I'll postpone that till I haul off a few
miles from this."

"Why, what's the matter?" said Cla