e "Dolphin," and
a quick and intelligible exchange of lesser signals in active operation
between the two vessels. Of all that cloud of canvas which had so lately
borne down the vessel of the Rover, her top sails alone remained distended
to the yards; the remainder was hanging in festoons, and fluttering
loosely before a favourable breeze. The ship itself was running directly
for the stranger, who, in turn, was sullenly securing his lofty sails,
like one who was disappointed in a high-prized and expected object.

"Now is yon fellow sorry to believe him a friend whom he had lately
supposed an enemy," said the Rover, directing the attention of his
lieutenant to the confiding manner with which their neighbour suffered
himself to be deceived by his surreptitiously obtained signals. "It is a
tempting offer; but I pass it, Wilder for your sake."

The gaze of the lieutenant seemed bewildered, but he made no reply.
Indeed, but little time was given for deliberation or discourse. The
"Dolphin" rolled swiftly along her path, and each moment dissipated the
mist in which distance had enveloped the lesser objects on board the
stranger. Guns, blocks, ropes, bolts, men, and even features, became
plainly visible, in rapid succession, as the water that divided them was
parted by the bows of the lawless ship. In a few short minutes, the
stranger, having secured most of his lighter canvas, came sweeping up to
the wind; and then, as his after-sails, squared for the purpose, took the
breeze on their outer surface, the mass of his hull became stationary.

The people of the "Dolphin" had so far imitated the confiding credulity of
the deceived cruiser of the Crown, as to furl all their loftiest duck,
each man employed in the service trusting implicitly to the discretion and
daring of the singular being whose pleasure it was to bring their ship
into so hazardous a proximity to a powerful enemy--qualities that had been
known to avail them in circumstances of even greater delicacy than those
in which they were now placed. With this air of audacious confidence, the
dreaded Rover came gliding down upon her unsuspecting neighbour, until
within a few hundred feet of her weather-beam, when she too, with a
graceful curve in her course, bore up against the breeze, and came to a
state of rest. But Wilder, who regarded all the movements of his superior
in silent amazement, was not slow in observing that the head of the
"Dolphin" was laid a different way f