ed, find unsuspecting, the "Caroline," at no time a
natch for her powerful adversary, must fall an easy victim; nor would
there be much reason to apprehend that a single shot from the battery
could reach them, before the captor, and his prize, would be at such a
distance as to render the blow next to impotent if not utterly innocuous.
The wild and audacious character of such an enterprise was in full
accordance with the reputation of the desperate freebooter on whose
caprice, alone, the act now seemed solely to depend.

Under these impressions, and with the prospect of such a speedy
termination to his new-born authority it is not to be considered wonderful
that our adventurer awaited the result with an interest far exceeding that
of any of those by whom he was surrounded He walked into the waist of the
ship, and endeavoured to read the plan of his secret confederates by some
of those indications that are familiar to a seaman. Not the smallest sign
of any intention to depart, or in any manner to change her position, was,
however, discoverable in the pretended slaver. She lay in the same deep,
beautiful, but treacherous quiet, as that in which she had reposed
throughout the whole of the eventful morning. But a solitary individual
could be seen amid the mazes of her rigging, or along the wide reach of
all her spars. It was a seaman seated on the extremity of a lower yard,
where he appeared to busy himself with one of those repairs that are so
constantly required in the gear of a large ship. As the man was placed on
the weather side of his own vessel, Wilder instantly conceived the idea
that he was thus stationed to cast a grapnel into the rigging of the
"Caroline," should such a measure become necessary, in order to bring the
two ships foul of each other. With a view to prevent so rude an encounter,
he instantly determined to defeat the plan. Calling to the pilot, he told
him the attempt to pass to windward was of very doubtful success, and
reminded him that the safer way would be to go to leeward.

"No fear, no fear, Captain," returned the stubborn conductor of the ship,
who, as his authority was so brief, was only the more jealous of its
unrestrained exercise, and who, like an usurper of the throne, felt a
jealousy of the more legitimate power which he had temporarily
dispossessed; "no fear of me, Captain. I have trolled over this ground
oftener than you have crossed the ocean, and I know the name of every rock
on the bo