asion; but even Wilder, who vexed his
sight, in often-repeated examinations, was obliged to confess to himself,
that the stranger seemed to glide, across the waste of waters, more like a
body floating in the air, than a ship resorting to the ordinary expedients
of mariners.

Mrs Wyllys and her charge had, by this time, retired to their cabin; the
former secretly felicitating herself on the prospect of soon quitting a
vessel that had commenced its voyage under such sinister circumstances as
to have deranged the equilibrium of even her well-governed and
highly-disciplined mind. Gertrude was left in ignorance of the change. To
her uninstructed eye, all appeared the same on the wilderness of the
ocean; Wilder having it in his power to alter the direction of his vessel
as often as he pleased, without his fairer and more youthful passenger
being any the wiser for the same.

Not so, however, with the intelligent Commander of the "Caroline"
himself. To him there was neither obscurity nor doubt, in the midst of his
midnight path. His eye had long been familiar with every star that rose
from out the waving bed of the sea, to set in another dark and ragged
outline of the element; nor was there a blast, that swept across the
ocean, that his burning cheek could not tell from what quarter of the
heavens it poured out its power. He knew, and understood, each inclination
made by the bows of his ship; his mind kept even pace with her windings
and turnings, in all her trackless wanderings; and he had little need to
consult any of the accessories of his art, to tell him what course to
steer, or in what manner to guide the movements of the nice machine he
governed. Still was he unable to explain the extraordinary evolutions of
the stranger. His smallest change seemed rather anticipated than followed;
and his hopes of eluding a vigilance, that proved so watchful, was baffled
by a facility of manoeuvring, and a superiority of sailing, that really
began to assume, even to his intelligent eyes, the appearance of some
unaccountable agency.

While our adventurer was engaged in the gloomy musings that such
impressions were not ill adapted to excite, the heavens and the sea began
to exhibit another aspect. The bright streak which had so long hung along
the eastern horizon, as though the curtain of the firmament had been
slightly opened to admit a passage for the winds, was now suddenly closed;
and heavy masses of black clouds began to gather in