t in the interior country, was proverbial, and their
habits simple; while the ocean was never entered by those barbarians, who
then rendered some of the seas of the other hemisphere as fearful as they
were pleasant.

Notwithstanding this known and customary character of tranquillity, and
the lateness of the hour, Alida had not been many moments in her balcony,
before she heard the sound of oars. The stroke was measured, and the noise
low and distant, but it was too familiar to be mistaken. She wondered at
the expedition of Ludlow, who was not accustomed to show such haste in
quitting her presence, and leaned over the railing to catch a glimpse of
his departing boat. Each moment she expected to see the little bark issue
from out of the shadows of the land, into the sheet of brightness which
stretched nearly to the cruiser. She gazed long, and in vain, for no barge
appeared, and yet the sound had become inaudible. A light still hung at
the peak of the Coquette, a sign that the commander was out of his vessel.

The view of a fine ship, seen by the aid of the moon, with its symmetry of
spars, and its delicate tracery of cordage, and the heavy and grand
movements of the hull as it rolls on the sluggish billows of a calm sea,
is ever a pleasing and indeed an imposing spectacle. Alida knew that
more, than a hundred human beings slept within the black and silent mass,
and her thoughts insensibly wandered to the business of their daring
lives, their limited abode, and yet wandering existence, their frank and
manly qualities, their devotion to the cause of those who occupied the
land, their broken and interrupted connexion with the rest of the human
family, and finally to those weakened domestic ties, and to that
reputation for inconstancy, which are apparently a natural consequence of
all. She sighed, and her eye wandered from the ship to that ocean on which
it was constructed to dwell. From the distant, low, and nearly
imperceptible shore of the island of Nassau, to the coast of New-Jersey,
there was one broad and untenanted waste. Even the sea-fowl rested his
tired wing, and slept tranquilly on the water. The broad space appeared
like some great and unfrequented desert, or rather like a denser and more
material copy of the firmament by which it was canopied.

It has been mentioned that a stunted growth of oaks and pines covered much
of the sandy ridge that formed the cape. The same covering furnished a
dark setting to the wat