n," cried the
speaker in tones loud enough to send his words into the fore-top, where
the messmate he addressed was attending to some especial duty.

"Ay, ay," was the answer; "seeing us in motion, has put him in mind of his
next voyage. They keep watch aboard the fellow, like the sun in Greenland
six months on deck, and six months below!"

The witticism produced, as usual, a laugh among the seamen, who continued
their remarks in a similar vein, but in tones more suited to the deference
due to their superiors.

The eyes, however, of Wilder had fastened themselves on the other ship.
The man so long seated on the end of the main-yard had disappeared, and
another sailor was deliberately walking along the opposite quarter of the
same spar, steadying himself by the boom, and holding in one hand the end
of a rope, which he was apparently about to reeve in the place where it
properly belonged. The first glance told Wilder that the latter was Fid,
who was so far recovered from his debauch as to tread the giddy height
with as much, if not greater, steadiness than he would have rolled along
the ground, had his duty called him to terra firma. The countenance of the
young man, which, an instant before, had been flushed with excitement, and
which was beaming with the pleasure of an opening confidence, changed
directly to a look of gloom and reserve. Mrs Wyllys who had lost no shade
of the varying expression of his face, resumed the discourse, with some
earnestness, where he had seen fit so abruptly to break it off.

"You would relieve us," she said, "at the expense of"----

"Life, Madam; but not of honour."

"Gertrude, we can now retire to our cabin," observed Mrs Wyllys, with an
air of cold displeasure, in which disappointment was a good deal mingled
with resentment at the trifling of which she believed herself the subject.
The eye of Gertrude was no less averted and distant than that of her
governess, while the tint that gave lustre to its beam was brighter, if
not quite so resentful. As the two moved past the silent Wilder, each
dropped a distant salute, and then our adventurer found himself the sole
occupant of the quarter-deck. While his crew were busied in coiling ropes,
and clearing the decks, their young Commander leaned his head on the
taffrail, (that part of the vessel which the good relict of the
Rear-Admiral had so strangely confounded with a very different object in
the other end of the ship), remaining for many mi