stood looking at each other, like men who had just made a hazardous and
fearful experiment. The view again opened, and objects on the land became
visible through the still falling rain. The change was like that from
night to day. Men who had passed their lives on the sea drew long and
relieving breaths, conscious that the danger was happily passed. As the
more pressing interest of their own situation abated they remembered the
object of their search. All eyes were turned in quest of the smuggler;
but, by some inexplicable means, he had disappeared.

'The Skimmer of the Seas!' and 'What has become of the brigantine?' were
exclamations that the discipline of a royal cruiser could not repress.
They were repeated by a hundred mouths, while twice as many eyes sought to
find the beautiful fabric. All looked in vain. The spot where the
Water-Witch had so lately lain, was vacant, and no vestige of her wreck
lined the shores of the Cove. During the time the ship was handing her
sails, and preparing to enter the Cove, no one had leisure to look for the
stranger; and after the vessel had anchored, until that moment, it was not
possible to see her length, on any side of them. There was still a dense
mass of falling water moving seaward; but the curious and anxious eyes of
Ludlow made fruitless efforts to penetrate its secrets. Once indeed, more
than an hour after the gust had reached his own ship, and when the ocean
in the offing was clear and calm, he thought he could distinguish, far to
seaward, the delicate tracery of a vessel's spars, drawn against the
horizon, without any canvas set. But a second look did not assure him of
the truth of the conjecture.

There were many extraordinary tales related that night, on board Her
Britannic Majesty's ship Coquette. The boatswain affirmed that, while
piping below in order to overhaul the cables, he had heard a screaming in
the air, that sounded as if a hundred devils were mocking him, and which
he told the gunner, in confidence, he believed was no more than the
winding of a call on board the brigantine, who had taken occasion, when
other vessels were glad to anchor, to get under way, in her own fashion.
There was also a fore-top-man named Robert Yarn, a fellow whose faculty
for story-telling equalled that of Scheherazade, and who not only
asserted, but who confirmed the declaration by many strange oaths, that
while he lay on the lee-fore-top-sail-yard-arm, stretching forth an arm to
grasp