had just taken its
flight. Wilder followed the boat with his eyes, for a moment; but his
thoughts were recalled by the voice of the pilot, who again called, from
the forward part of the ship,--

"Let the light sails lift a little, boy; let her lift keep every inch you
can, or you'll not weather the slaver. Luff, I say, sir; luff."

"The slaver!" muttered our adventurer, hastening to a part of the ship
whence he could command a view of that important, and to him doubly
interesting ship; "ay, the slaver! it may be difficult, indeed to weather
upon the slaver!"

He had unconsciously placed himself near Mrs Wyllys and Gertrude; the
latter of whom was leaning on the rail of the quarter-deck, regarding the
strange vessel at anchor, with a pleasure far from unnatural to her years
and sex.

"You may laugh at me, and call me fickle, and perhaps credulous, dear Mrs
Wyllys," the unsuspecting girl cried, just as Wilder had taken the
foregoing position, "but I wish we were well out of this 'Royal Caroline,'
and that our passage was to be made in yonder beautiful ship!"

"It is indeed a beautiful ship!" returned Wyllys; "but I know not that it
would be safer, or more comfortable, than the one we are in."

"With what symmetry and order the ropes are arranged! and how like a bird
it floats upon the water!"

"Had you particularized the duck, the comparison would have been exactly
nautical," said the governess, smiling mournfully; "you show capabilities
my love, to be one day a seaman's wife."

Gertrude blushed a little; and, turning back her head to answer in the
playful vein of her governess, her eye met the riveted look of Wilder,
fastened on herself. The colour on her cheek deepened to a carnation, and
she was mute; the large gipsy hat she wore serving to conceal both her
face and the confusion which so deeply suffused it.

"You make no answer, child, as if you reflected seriously on the chances,"
continued Mrs Wyllys, whose thoughtful and abstracted mien, however,
sufficiently proved she scarcely knew what she uttered.

"The sea is too unstable an element for my taste," Gertrude coldly
answered. "Pray tell me, Mrs Wyllys, is the vessel we are approaching a
King's ship? She has a warlike, not to say a threatening exterior."

"The pilot has twice called her a slaver."

"A slaver! How deceitful then is all her beauty and symmetry! I will never
trust to appearances again, since so lovely an object can be devoted to so
vile