f the 'Royal Caroline!'"

"It was not within the ken of human Knowledge to foresee this evil,"
continued the governess, fastening her eye on the countenance of Wilder,
as though she would ask a question which conscience told her, at the same
time, betrayed a portion of that very superstition which had hastened the
fate of the rude being they had so lately passed.

"It was not."

"And the danger, to which you so often and so inexplicably alluded, had no
reference to this we have incurred?"

"It had not."

"It has gone, with the change in our situation?"

"I hope it has."

"See!" interrupted Gertrude, laying a hand, in her haste, on the arm of
Wilder. "Heaven be praised! yonder is something at last to relieve the
view."

"It is a ship!" exclaimed her governess; but, an envious wave lifting its
green side between them and the object, they sunk into a trough, as though
the vision had been placed momentarily before their eyes, merely to taunt
them with its image. The quick glance of Wilder had caught, however, a
glimpse of the tracery against the heavens, as they descended. When the
boat rose again, his look was properly directed, and he was enabled to be
certain of the reality of the vessel. Wave succeeded wave, and moments
followed moments, during which the stranger was given to their gaze, and
as often disappeared, as the launch unavoidably fell into the troughs of
the seas. These short and hasty glimpses sufficed, however, to convey all
that was necessary to the eye of a man who had been nurtured on that
element, where circumstances now exacted of him such constant and
unequivocal evidences of his skill.

At the distance of a mile, there was in fact a ship to be seen, rolling
and pitching gracefully, and without any apparent effort, on those waves
through which the launch was struggling with such difficulty. A solitary
sail was set, to steady the vessel, and that so reduced, by reefs, as to
look like a little snowy cloud amid the dark maze of rigging and spars. At
times, her long and tapering masts appeared pointing to the zenith, or
even rolling as if inclining against the wind; and then, again, with slow
and graceful sweeps, they seemed to fall towards the ruffled surface of
the ocean, as though about to seek refuge from their endless motion, in
the bosom of the agitated element itself. There were moments when the
long, low, and black hull was seen distinctly resting on the summit of a
sea, and glittering in