ng out his instruments, with such medicines as the
occasion seems to call for--the strange vessel has been for a time
unthought of.

The cry now raised recalls her, causing all to rush towards the
frigate's side, and once more bend their eyes on the barque.

No, not _on_ her; only in the direction where she was last seen. For,
to their intense astonishment, _the polacca has disappeared_!

CHAPTER SEVEN.

A BLACK SQUALL.

The surprise caused by the disappearance of the strange vessel is but
short-lived; explained by that very natural phenomenon--a fog. Not the
haze already spoken of; but a dense bank of dark vapour that, drifting
over the surface of the sea, has suddenly enveloped the barque within
its floating folds.

It threatens to do the same with the frigate--as every sailor in her can
perceive. But though their wondering is at an end, a sense of undefined
fear still holds possession of them. Nor is this due to the fast
approaching fog. That could not frighten men who have dared every
danger of the deep, and oft groped their way through icy seas shrouded
in darkness almost amorphous.

Their fears spring from the old fancy, that the other phenomena are not
natural. The fog of itself may be; but what brings it on, just then, at
a crisis, when they were speculating about the character of the chased
vessel, some doubting her honesty, others sceptical of her reality, not
a few boldly pronouncing her as a phantom? If an accident of nature,
certainly a remarkable one.

The reader may smile at credulity of this kind; but not he who has mixed
among the men of the forecastle, whatever the nationality of the ship,
and whether merchantmen or man-of-war. Not all the training of naval
schools, nor the boasted enlightenment of this our age, has fully
eradicated from the mind of the canvas-clad mariner a belief in
something more than he has seen, or can see--something _outside_ nature.
To suppose him emancipated from this would be to hold him of higher
intelligence than his fellow-men, who stay ashore ploughing the soil, as
he does the sea. To thousands of these he can point, saying: "Behold
the believers in supernatural existences--in spirit-rappings--ay, in
very ghosts; this not only in days gone by, but now--now more than ever
within memory of man!" Then let not landsmen scoff at such fancies, not
a whit more absurd than their own credence in spiritualism.

Aside from this sort of feeling in the warship,