e which way the wind blows, and that no one is a jot safer from her
speed than her honesty. According to all that I have heard, she is
something such a craft as yonder slaver, that has been lying the week
past, the Lord knows why, in our outer harbour."

As the gossipping tailor had necessarily lost many precious moments, in
relating the preceding history he now set about redeeming them with the
utmost diligence, keeping time to the rapid movement of his needle-hand,
by corresponding jerks of his head and shoulders. In the meanwhile, the
bumpkin, whose wondering mind was by this time charged nearly to bursting
with what he had heard, turned his look towards the vessel the other had
pointed out, in order to get the only image that was now required, to
enable him to do fitting credit to so moving a tale, suitably engraved on
his imagination. There was necessarily a pause, while the respective
parties were thus severally occupied. It was suddenly broken by the
tailor, who clipped the thread with which he had just finished the
garment, cast every thing from his hands, threw his spectacles upon his
forehead, and, leaning his arms on his knees in such a manner as to form a
perfect labyrinth with the limbs, he stretched his body forward so far as
to lean out of the window, riveting his eyes also on the ship, which still
attracted the gaze of his companion.

"Do you know, Pardy," he said, "that strange thoughts and cruel misgivings
have come over me concerning that very vessel? They say she is a slaver
come in for wood and water, and there she has been a week, and not a stick
bigger than an oar has gone up her side, and I'll engage that ten drops
from Jamaica have gone on board her, to one from the spring. Then you may
see she is anchored in such a way that but one of the guns from the
battery can touch her; whereas, had she been a real timid trader, she
would naturally have got into a place where, if a straggling picaroon
should come into the port, he would have found her in the very hottest of
the fire."

"You have an ingenious turn with you, good-man," returned the wondering
countryman; "now a ship might have lain on the battery island itself, and
I would have hardly noticed the thing."

"'Tis use and experience, Pardon, that makes men of us all. I should know
something of batteries, having seen so many wars, and I served a campaign
of a week, in that very fort, when the rumour came that the French were
sending cruisers f