e should find them very difficult customers to dispose
of. Still he was not the man to allow a slaver to pass him without
attempting to capture her, inferior as he might be to her in force. The
night was very dark, now and then a few flashes of phosphorescent light
played over the ocean, or were stirred up by the bows of the schooner,
as she slowly worked her way through the water; but even the sharpest
eyes on board could scarcely distinguish anything two or three hundred
yards off. Terence and Alick could not bring themselves to lie down nor
take any rest, even though Hemming urged them to do so. They were
leaning together over the bulwarks. They neither of them could have
said whether they were asleep or awake. The wind had dropped
considerably, and at intervals the sails shook themselves and gave a
loud flap against the masts. Terence felt a hand suddenly resting on
his shoulder.

"What is that? Do you hear a sound? Did you see anything?" said a
voice in his ear.

The voice appeared so deep and hollow and strange, that he did not at
first discover that it was Murray speaking to him. Alick repeated the
question twice before he replied. He had, in truth, been fast asleep,
but he did not know it.

"No--what? see, hear what? I don't see anything," was his somewhat
incoherent answer.

"There it is again; music--some one singing," continued Alick. "Can you
see nothing?"

The two midshipmen peered eagerly out into the darkness, but nothing
could they discern. They, however, drew Hemming's attention to the
circumstance. He had been walking the deck, so the noise of his own
footsteps prevented him from hearing the sound. He now listened with
them, but after some time, hearing nothing, was inclined to think that
they had been deceived by their fancy. Murray thought not, and, keeping
his eyes on the point from which he believed the sounds had come, was
almost certain that he could distinguish the sails of a square-rigged
vessel passing at no great distance off, standing in towards the coast.
He called Hemming's attention to it, but whether or not the night mists
had at the moment he was looking lifted up, and again sunk down, and
allowed him to see a vessel really there, or that his fancy still misled
him, it was impossible to say. Certainly no sail was to be seen, nor
was a sound again heard. Slowly the hours of that night seemed to pass
away. Day came at last, a gloomy coast of Africa morning, with