in answering interrogatories."

"Ignorance!" repeated the Rover, glancing his eye uneasily, and with a
rapidity peculiar to himself, from one to the other, and from both to the
rising object in the horizon: "Skilful! I know not: The man has no air of
doubt.--You think her tonnage to be precisely that which you have said?"

The large dark eyes of Scipio roiled, in turn, from his new Commander to
his ancient master, while, for a moment, his faculties appeared to be lost
in inextricable confusion. But the uncertainty continued only for a
moment. He no sooner read the frown that was gathering deeply over the
brow of the latter, than the air of confidence with which he had
pronounced his former opinion vanished in a look of obstinacy so settled,
that one might well have despaired of ever driving, or enticing, him again
to seem to think.

"I ask you, if the stranger may not be a dozen tons larger or smaller than
what you have named?" continued the Rover, when he found his former
question was not likely to be soon answered.

"He'm just as masser wish 'em," returned Scipio.

"I wish him a thousand; since he will then prove the richer prize."

"I s'pose he'm quite a t'ousand, sir."

"Or a snug ship of three hundred, if lined with gold, might do."

"He look berry like a t'ree hundred."

"To me it seems a brig."

"I t'ink him brig too, masser."

"Or possibly, after all, the stranger may prove a schooner, with many
lofty and light sails."

"A schooner often carry a royal," returned the black, resolute to
acquiesce in all the other said.

"Who knows it is a sail at all! Forward there! It may be well to have more
opinions than one on so weighty a matter. Forward there! send the
foretop-man that is called Fid upon the poop. Your companions are so
intelligent and so faithful, Mr. Wilder, that you are not to be surprised
if I shew an undue desire for their information."

Wilder compressed his lips, and the rest of the groupe manifested a good
deal of amazement; but the latter had been too long accustomed to the
caprice of their Commander, and the former was too wise, to speak at a
moment when his humour seemed at the highest. The topman, however, was not
long in making his appearance, and then the chief saw fit again to break
the silence.

"And you think it questionable whether it be a sail at all?" he continued.

"He'm sartain nothing but a fly-away," returned the obstinate black.

"You hear what your friend the ne