ning after his needle, like a tailor who has found a hole
in his neighbor's coat?"

"The witches may tell! I only know that such a rover there is, and that he
is here to-day, and there to-morrow. Some say, it is only a craft of mist,
that skims the top of the seas, like a sailing water-fowl, and others
think it is the sprite of a vessel that was rifled and burnt by Kidd, in
the Indian Ocean, looking for its gold and the killed. I saw him once,
myself, but the distance was so great, and his manoeuvres so unnatural,
that I could hardly give a good account of his hull, or rig."

"This is matter that don't get into the log every watch! Whereaway, or in
what seas, didst meet the thing?"

"'Twas off the Branch. We were fishing in thick weather, and when the mist
lifted, a little, there was a craft seen standing in-shore, running like a
race-horse; but while we got our anchor, she had made a league of offing,
on the other tack!"

"A certain proof of either her, or your, activity! But what might have
been the form and shape of your fly-away?"

"Nothing determined. To one she seemed a full-rigged and booming ship;
another took her for a Bermudian scudder, while to me she had the look of
twenty periaguas built into a single craft. It is well known, however,
that a West-Indiaman went to sea that night, and, though it is now three
years, no tidings of her, or her crew, have ever come to any in York. I
have never gone upon the banks to fish since that day, in thick weather."

"You have done well," observed the stranger, "I have seen many wonderful
sights, myself, on the rolling ocean; and he, whose business it is to lay
between wind and water, like you, my friend, should never trust himself
within reach of one of those devil's flyers I could tell you a tale of an
affair in the calm latitudes, under the burning sun, that would be a
lesson to all of over-bold curiosity! Commission and character are not
affairs for your in-shore coaster."

"We have time to hear it," observed the Patroon, whose attention had been
excited by the discourse, and who read in the dark eye of Alida that she
felt an interest in the expected narrative.

But the countenance of the stranger suddenly grew serious. He shook his
head, like one who had sufficient reasons for his silence; and,
relinquishing the tiller, he quite coolly obliged a gaping countryman, in
the centre of the boat, to yield his place, where he laid his own athletic
form, at full length