ers of the Cove. Above this outline of wood, which
fringed the margin of the sea. Alida now fancied she saw an object in
motion. At first, she believed some ragged and naked tree, of which the
coast had many, was so placed as to deceive her vision, and had thrown its
naked lines upon the back-ground of water, in a manner to assume the shape
and tracery of a light-rigged vessel. But when the dark and symmetrical
spars were distinctly seen, gliding past objects that were known to be
stationary, it was impossible to doubt their character. The maiden
wondered, and her surprise was not unmixed with apprehension. It seemed as
if the stranger for such the vessel must needs be, was recklessly
approaching a surf, that, in its most tranquil moments, was dangerous to
such a fabric, and that he steered, unconscious of hazard, directly upon
the land. Even the movement was mysterious and unusual. Sails there were
none; and yet the light and lofty spars were soon hid behind a thicket
that covered a knoll near the margin of the sea. Alida expected, each
moment, to hear the cry of mariners in distress, and then, as the minutes
passed and no such fearful sound interrupted the stillness of the night,
she began to bethink her of those lawless rovers, who were known to abound
among the Carribean isles, and who were said sometimes even to enter and
to refit, in the smaller and more secret inlets of the American continent.
The tales, coupled with the deeds, character, and fate of the notorious
Kidd, were then still recent, and although magnified and colored by vulgar
exaggerations, as all such tales are known to be, enough was believed, by
the better instructed, to make his life and death the subject of many
curious and mysterious rumors. At this moment, she would have gladly
recalled the young commander of the Coquette, to apprize him of the enemy
that was nigh; and then, ashamed of terrors that she was fain to hope
savored more of woman's weakness than of truth, she endeavored to believe
the whole some ordinary movement of a coaster, who, familiar with his
situation, could rot possibly be either in want of aid, or an object of
alarm. Just as this natural and consoling conclusion crossed her mind, she
very audibly heard a step in her pavilion. It seemed near the door of the
room she occupied. Breathless, more with the excitement of her
imagination, than with any actual fear created by this new cause of alarm,
the maiden quitted the balcony, and