very morning."

Nighthead now indulged in a low, but what to his listeners appeared to be
an exceedingly meaning, laugh.

"When a ship has a certain sort of Captain, one is not to be surprised at
any thing," he answered the instant his significant merriment had ceased.
"For my own part, I shipped to go from Bristol to the Carolinas and
Jamaica, touching at Newport out and home; and I will say, boldly, I have
no wish to go any where else. As to backing the 'Caroline' from her
awkward birth alongside the slaver, why it was well done; most too well
for so young a manner. Had I done the thing myself, it could not have been
much better. But what think you, brothers of the old man in the skiff?
There was a chase, and an escape, such as few old sea-dogs have the
fortune to behold! I have heard of a smuggler that was chased a hundred
times by his Majesty's cutters, in the chops of the Channel, and which
always had a fog handy to run into, but out of which no man could truly
say he ever saw her come again! This skiff may have plied between the land
and that Guernseyman, for any thing I know to the contrary; but it is not
a boat I wish to pull a scull in."

"That _was_ a remarkable flight!" exclaimed the elder seaman, whose faith
in the character of our adventurer began to give way gradually, before
such an accumulation of testimony.

"I call it so; though other men may possibly know better than I, who have
only followed the water five-and-thirty years. Then, here is the sea
getting up, in an unaccountable manner! and look at these rags of clouds,
which darken the heavens! and yet there is light enough, coming from the
ocean, for a good scholar to read by!"

"I've often seen the weather as it is now."

"Ay, who has not? It is seldom that any man, let him come from what part
he will, makes his first voyage as Captain. Let who will be out to-night
upon the water, I'll engage he has been there before. I have seen worse
looking skies, and even worse looking water, than this; but I never knew
any good come of either. The night I was wreck'd in the bay of"----

"In the waist there!" cried the calm, authoritative tones of Wilder.

Had a warning voice arisen from the turbulent and rushing ocean itself, it
would not have sounded more alarming, in the startled ears of the
conscious seamen, than this sudden hail. Their young Commander found it
necessary to repeat it, before even Nighthead, the proper and official
spokesman, could mu