oritative
mandates which Wilder saw fit to deliver from his own lips. No longer
pressed up against the wind, the ship, obedient to her helm, gracefully
began to incline her head from the waves, and to bring the wind abeam.
Then, instead of breasting and mounting the endless hillocks, like a being
that toiled heavily along its path, she fell into the trough of the sea,
from which she issued like a courser, who, have conquered an ascent,
shoots along the track with redoubled velocity. For an instant the wind
appear ed to have lulled, though the wide ridge of foam which rolled
along on each side the vessel's bows, sufficiently proclaimed that she was
skimming lightly before it. In another moment, the tall spars began to
incline again to the west, and the vessel came swooping up to the wind,
until her plunges and shocks against the seas were renewed as violently as
before. When every yard and sheet were properly trimmed to meet the new
position of the vessel, Wilder turned anxiously to get a glimpse of the
stranger. A minute was lost in ascertaining the precise spot where he
ought to appear; for, in such a chaos of water, and with no guide but the
judgment, the eye was apt to deceive itself, by referring to the nearer
and more familiar objects by which the spectator was surrounded.

"The stranger has vanished!" said Earing, with a voice in whose tones
mental relief and distrust were both, at the same moment, oddly
manifesting themselves.

"He should be on this quarter; but I confess I see him not!"

"Ay, ay, sir; this is the way that the midnight cruiser off the Hope is
said to come and go. There are men who have seen that vessel shut in by a
fog, in as fine a star-light night as was ever met in a southern latitude.
But then this cannot be the Dutchman, since it is so many long leagues
from the pitch of the Cape to the coast of North-America.

"Here he lies; and, by heaven! he has already gone about!" cried Wilder.

The truth of what our young adventurer had just affirmed was indeed now
sufficiently evident to the eye of any seaman. The same diminutive and
misty tracery, as before, was to be seen on the light background of the
threatening horizon, looking not unlike the faintest shadows cast upon
some brighter surface by the deception of the phantasmagoria. But to the
mariners, who so well knew how to distinguish between the different lines
of her masts, it was very evident that her course had been suddenly and
dexterou