m
still lay where he had seen her cast anchor on the morning of her
arrival. This surprised him more for, if the latter was really a pirate
schooner (as had been hinted more than once that day by various members
of the settlement), why did she remain so fearlessly and peacefully
within range of the guns of so dangerous and powerful an enemy? He also
observed that one of the large boats of the Talisman was in the water
alongside, and full of armed men, as if about to put off on some warlike
expedition, while his pocket telescope enabled him to perceive that
Gascoyne, who must needs be the pirate captain, if the suspicions of his
friends were correct, was smoking quietly on the quarter-deck,
apparently holding amicable converse with the British commander. The
youth knew not what to think; for it was preposterous to suppose that a
pirate captain could by any possibility be the intimate friend of his
own mother.

These and many other conflicting thoughts kept rushing through his mind
as he hastened forward; but the conclusions to which they led him--if,
indeed, they led him to any--were altogether upset by the unaccountable
and extremely piratical conduct of the seamen who carried off Alice and
her companions, and whom he knew to be part of the crew of the Foam,
both from their costume and from the direction in which they rowed their
little boat.

The young man's perplexities were, however, neutralized for the time by
his anxiety for his friend the pastor, and by the necessity of instant
and vigorous effort for his rescue. He had just time, before plunging
into the sea, to note with satisfaction that the man-of-war's boat had
pushed off, and that if Alice really was in the hands of pirates, there
was the certainty of her being speedily rescued.

In this latter supposition, however, Henry was mistaken.

The events on shore which we have just described had been witnessed, of
course, by the crews of both vessels with, as may be easily conjectured,
very different feelings.

In the Foam, the few men who were lounging about the deck looked
uneasily from the war vessel to the countenance of Manton, in whose
hands they felt that their fate now lay. The object of their regard
paced the deck slowly, with his hands in his pockets and a pipe in his
mouth, in the most listless manner, in order to deceive the numerous
eyes which he knew full well scanned his movements with deep curiosity.
The frowning brow and the tightly compresse