, observing, "It must fine soon; den
I see sip." He had not been many minutes at the mast-head when he
shouted, "Sip in-shore!" He had discovered her royals above the mist.
Sail was instantly made in chase. Some time elapsed before the _Sea
Sprite_ was discovered. Suddenly the mist cleared, and there appeared
close in-shore a large American slave ship. There was no doubt about
her, with her great beam and wide spread of canvas.

Hoisting American colours, the stranger made all sail to escape. He was
standing off the land; but as on that course he would have had to pass
unpleasantly near the corvette, he tacked in-shore, and then bore away
along the surf, hoping thus, with his large sails, to draw ahead and
escape. The light wind appeared to favour him, but Captain Fisher
determined that it should not. Ordering the boats away, he took one
with a strongly-armed crew, and pulled to windward to cut off the chase,
while two others went to leeward, so that his chance of escaping was
small indeed. The slave captain seemed to think so likewise. He dared
not meet in fight the true-hearted British seaman. Regardless of the
risk he and his own crew would run, of the destruction he was about to
bring on hundreds of his fellow-creatures, the savage slave captain put
up his helm, and ran the ship under all sail towards the shore.

"What is the fellow about?" exclaimed Captain Fisher. "If that ship is
full, as she seems to be, she has not less than four or five hundred
human beings on board, and he'll run the risk of drowning every one of
them."

It was too evident, however, that this was the design of the slaver's
captain. His heart was seared. Long accustomed to human suffering in
every possible form, he set no more value on the lives of his cargo than
if they had been so many sheep, except so far as they could be exchanged
for all-potent dollars. On flew the beautiful fabric--for beautiful she
was, in spite of her nefarious employment--to destruction. With all her
sails set, through the roaring surf she dashed, then rose on the summit
of a sea, and down she came, striking heavily, her ropes flying wildly
and her sails flapping furiously in the breeze. What mattered it to the
slaver's crew that they left their hapless passengers to perish! Their
boats were lowered, and, with such valuables as they could secure, and
some of the slaves which, for their greater value, they wished to save,
they made their escape to s