ring whale, more by listless volition, than
through any agency of human hands.

Not the smallest of these changes escaped the keen and understanding
examination of Wilder. He saw that, as his own ship retired, the side of
the slaver was gradually exposed to the "Caroline." The muzzles of the
threatening guns gaped constantly on his vessel, as the eye of the
crouching tiger follows the movement of its prey; and at no time, while
nearest, did there exist a single instant that the decks of the latter
ship could not have been swept, by a general discharge from the battery of
the former. At each successive order issued from his own lips, our
adventurer turned his eye, with increasng interest, to ascertain whether
he would be permitted to execute it; and never did he feel certain that he
was left to the sole management of the "Caroline" until he found that she
had backed from her dangerous proximity to the other; and that, obedient
to a new disposition of her sails, she was falling off, before the light
air, in a place where he could hold her entirely at command.

Finding that the tide was getting unfavourable and the wind too light to
stem it, the sails were then drawn to her yards in festoons, and an anchor
was dropped to the bottom.

Chapter XIII.

"What have here? A man, or a fish?"--_The Tempest._

The "Caroline" now lay within a cable's length of the supposed slaver. In
dismissing the pilot, Wilder had assumed a responsibility from which a
seaman usually shrinks, since, in the case of any untoward accident in
leaving the port, it would involve a loss of insurance, and his own
probable punishment. How far he had been influenced, in taking so decided
a step, by a knowledge of his being beyond or above, the reach of the law,
will probably be made manifest in the course of the narrative; the only
immediate effect of the measure, was, to draw the whole of his attention,
which had before been so much divided between his passengers and the ship,
to the care of the latter. But, so soon as his vessel was secured, for a
time at least, and his mind was no longer excited by the expectation of a
scene of immediate violence, our adventurer found leisure to return to his
former, though (to so thorough a seaman) scarcely more agreeable
occupation. The success of his delicate manoeuvre had imparted to his
countenance a glow of something very like triumph; and his step, as he
advanced towards Mrs. Wyllys and Gertrude, w