look-outs have seen a double decker coming down in the night,
with ports up, and batteries lighted but then this can't be any such craft
as the Dutchman, since she is, at the most, no more than a large sloop of
war, if a cruiser at all."

"No, no," said Wilder, "this can never be the Dutchman."

"Yon vessel shows no lights; and, for that matter, she has such a misty
look, that one might well question its being a ship at all. Then, again,
the Dutchman is always seen to windward, and the strange sail we have here
lies broad upon our lee-quarter!"

"It is no Dutchman," said Wilder, drawing a long breath, like a man
awaking from a trance. "Main topmast-cross-trees, there!"

The man who was stationed aloft answered to this hail in the customary
manner, the short conversation that succeeded being necessarily maintained
in shouts, rather than in speeches.

"How long have you seen the stranger?" was the first demand of Wilder.

"I have just come aloft, sir; but the man I relieved tells me more than an
hour."

"And has the man you relieved come down? or what is that I see sitting on
the lee side of the mast-head?"

"'Tis Bob Brace, sir; who says he cannot sleep, and so he stays upon the
yard to keep me company."

"Send the man down. I would speak to him."

While the wakeful seaman was descending the rigging, the two officers
continued silent, each seeming to find sufficient occupation in musing on
what had already passed.

"And why are you not in your hammock?" said Wilder, a little sternly, to
the man who, in obedience to his order, had descended to the quarter-deck.

"I am not sleep-bound, your Honour, and therefore I had the mind to pass
another hour aloft."

"And why are you, who have two night-watches to keep already, so willing
to enlist in a third?"

"To own the truth, sir, my mind has been a little misgiving about this
passage, since the moment we lifted our anchor."

Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude, who were auditors, insensibly drew nigher, to
listen, with a species of interest which betrayed itself by the thrilling
of nerves, and an accelerated movement of the pulse.

"And you have your doubts, sir!" exclaimed the Captain, in a tone of
slight contempt. "Pray, may I ask what you have seen, on board here, to
make you distrust the ship."

"No harm in asking, your Honour," returned the seaman, crushing the hat he
held between two hands that had a gripe like a couple of vices, "and so I
hope there is none in a