and the little use that could be made of it under any
circumstances, prevented the place from being a subject of general
interest, with the coasters. Even when open the depth of its water was
uncertain, since a week or two of calms, or of westerly winds, would
permit the tides to clean its channel, while a single easterly gale was
sufficient to choke the entire inlet with sand. No wonder, then, that
Alida felt an amazement which was not quite free from superstitious alarm
when, at that hour and in such a scene, she saw a vessel gliding, as it
were unaided by sails or sweeps, out of the thicket that fringed the ocean
side of the Cove, into its very centre.

The strange and mysterious craft was a brigantine of that mixed
construction, which is much used, even in the most ancient and classical
seas of the other hemisphere, and which is supposed to unite the
advantages of both a square and of a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, but which
is nowhere seen to display the same beauty of form, and symmetry of
equipment, as on the coasts of this Union. The first and smallest of its
masts had all the complicated machinery of a ship, with its superior and
inferior spars, its wider reaching, though light and manageable yards, and
its various sails, shaped and arranged to meet every vicissitude and
caprice of the winds; while the latter, or larger of the two, rose like
the straight trunk of a pine from the hull, simple in its cordage, and
spreading a single sheet of canvas, that, in itself, was sufficient to
drive the fabric with vast velocity through the water. The hull was low,
graceful in its outlines, dark as the raven's wing, and so modelled as to
float on its element like a sea-gull riding the billows. There were many
delicate and attenuated lines among its spars, which were intended to
spread broader folds of canvas to the light airs, when necessary; but
these additions to the tracery of the machine, which added so much to its
beauty by day, were now, seen as it was by the dimmer and more treacherous
rays of the moon, scarcely visible. In short, as the vessel had entered
the Cove floating with the tide, and it was so singularly graceful and
fairy-like in form, that Alida, at first, was fain to discredit her
senses, and to believe it no more than some illusion of the fancy. Like
most others, she was ignorant of the temporary inlet, and, under the
circumstances, it was not difficult to lend a momentary credence to so
pleasing an idea.