eated our adventurer, affecting a look of surprise; "is there
then land in view?"

"Is there land in view! Have not hours gone by since the same was
proclaimed from the masts?"

"It may be so: We seamen are dull after a night of watching, and often
hear but little of that which passes."

There was a quick, suspicious glance from the eye of the governess, as if
she apprehended, she knew not what, ere she continued,--

"Has the sight of the cheerful, blessed soil of America so soon lost its
charm in your eye, that you approach it with an air so heedless? The
infatuation of men of your profession, in favour of so dangerous and so
treacherous an element, is an enigma I never could explain."

"Do seamen, then, love their calling with so devoted an affection?"
demanded Gertrude, in a haste that she might have found embarrassing to
explain.

"It is a folly of which we are often accused," rejoined Wilder, turning
his eye on the speaker, and smiling in a manner that had lost every shade
of reserve.

"And justly?"

"I fear, justly."

"Ay!" exclaimed Mrs Wyllys, with an emphasis that was remarkable for the
tone of soft and yet bitter regret with which it was uttered; "often
better than their quiet and peaceful homes!"

Gertrude pursued the idea no further; but her line full eye fell upon the
deck, as though she reflected deeply on a perversity of taste which could
render man so insensible to domestic pleasures, and incline him to court
the wild dangers of the ocean.

"I, at least, am free from the latter charge," exclaimed Wilder: "To me a
ship has always been a home."

"And much of my life, too, has been wasted in one," continued the
governess, who evidently was pursuing, in the recesses of her own mind,
some images of a time long past. "Happy and miserable alike, have been the
hours that I have passed upon the sea! Nor is this the first King's ship
in which it has been my fortune to be thrown. And yet the customs seem
changed since those days I mention, or else memory is beginning to lose
some of the impressions of an age when memory is apt to be most tenacious.
Is it usual, Mr Wilder, to admit an utter stranger, like yourself, to
exercise authority in a vessel of war?"

"Certainly not."

"And yet have you been acting, as far as my weak judgment teaches, as
second here, since the moment we entered this vessel, wrecked and helpless
fugitives from the waves."

Our adventurer again averted his eye, and evidently