. A moment's reflection sufficed to convince me of the utter
impossibility of the same man being in command of a pirate-brig one day
and an officer of a French man-o'-war the next. I might just as
reasonably have suspected the _Vestale_ herself of piracy; and _that_, I
well knew, would be carrying my suspicions to the uttermost extremity of
idiotic absurdity. I had, in short--so I finally decided--discovered a
mare's nest, and upon the strength of it had been upon the very verge of
proclaiming myself a hopeless idiot and making myself the perpetual
laughing-stock of the whole ship. I congratulated myself most heartily
upon having paused in time, and resolved very determinedly that I would
not further dwell upon the subject, or allow myself to be again lured
into entertaining such superlatively ridiculous notions.

Yet only four days later I was harassed by a temporary recurrence of all
my suspicions; and it was with the utmost difficulty that I combated
them. I succeeded, it is true, in so far maintaining my self-control as
to keep a silent tongue; but they continued persistently to haunt me
until--but steady! Whither away, Dick, my lad? You are out of your
course altogether and luffing into the wind's eye, instead of working
steadily to windward, tack and tack, and taking the incidents of your
story as you come to them.

The incident which revived my very singular suspicions was as follows:--

Upon learning the full details of Richards' story, Captain Vernon had
come to the conclusion that the brig which destroyed the _Juliet_ was a
vessel devoted to the combined pursuits of piracy and slave-trading;
that she was, in all probability, one of the three vessels reported by
the _Fawn_ as daily-expected to arrive on the coast from Cuba; and that
it was more than likely her destination was the Congo. He therefore
determined to make the best of his way back to that river, in the
sanguine hope of effecting her capture; after which he intended to run
down to Saint Paul de Loando to land the crew of the _Juliet_, Richards
having expressed a desire to be taken there if possible.

It was on the fourth day after we had picked up the _Juliet's_ crew, and
we were working our way back toward the mouth of the Congo, making short
tacks across the track of vessels running the notorious Middle Passage,
when the look-out aloft reported a sail about three points on the
weather-bow, running down toward us under a perfect cloud of c