he
trackless course, like a swift cloud drifting through the thin medium of
the upper air.

Chapter XIX.

"Now let it work: Mischief, thou art afoot,
Take then what course thou wilt!"--_Shakspeare_

When the velocity with which the vessel flew before the wind is properly
considered, the reader will not be surprised to learn, that, with the
change of a week in the time from that with which the foregoing incidents
close, we are enabled to open the scene of the present chapter in a very
different quarter of the same sea. It is unnecessary to follow the "Rover"
in the windings of that devious and apparently often uncertain course,
during which his keel furrowed more than a thousand miles of ocean, and
during which more than one cruiser of the King was skilfully eluded, and
sundry less dangerous encounters avoided, as much from inclination as any
other visible cause. It is quite sufficient for our purpose to lift the
curtain, which must conceal her movements for a time, to expose the
gallant vessel in a milder climate, and, when the season of the year is
considered, in a more propitious sea.

Exactly seven days after Gertrude and her governess became the inmates of
a ship whose character it is no longer necessary to conceal from the
reader, the sun rose upon her flapping sails, symmetrical spars, and dark
hull, within sight of a few, low, small and rocky islands. The colour of
the element would have told a seaman, had no mound of blue land been seen
issuing out of the world of waters, that the bottom of the sea was
approaching nigher than common to its surface, and that it was necessary
to guard against the well-known and dreaded dangers of the coast. Wind
there was none; for she vacillating and uncertain air which, from time to
time, distended for an instant the lighter canvas of the vessel, deserved
to be merely termed the breathings of a morning, which was breaking upon
the main, soft, mild, and seemingly so bland as to impart to the ocean the
placid character of a sleeping lake.

Everything having life in the ship was already up and stirring. Fifty
stout and healthy-looking seamen were hanging in different parts of her
rigging, some laughing, and holding low converse with messmates who lay
indolently on the neighbouring spars, and others leisurely performing the
light and trivial duty that was the ostensible employment of the moment.
More than as many others loitered carelessly about the decks below,