ver before experienced.

While others slept, Ludlow passed most of the night on deck. He laid
himself down in the hammock-cloths, for an hour or two, towards morning
though the wind did not sigh through the rigging louder than common,
without arousing him from his slumbers. At each low call of the officer of
the watch to the crew, his head was raised to glance around the narrow
horizon; and the ship never rolled heavily without causing him to awake.
He believed that the brigantine was near, and, for the first watch, he was
not without expectation that the two vessels might unexpectedly meet in
the obscurity. When this hope failed, the young seaman had recourse to
artifice, in his turn, in order to entrap one who appeared so practised
and so expert in the devices of the sea.

About midnight, when the watches were changed, and the whole crew, with
the exception of the idlers, were on deck, orders were given to hoist out
the boats. This operation, one of exceeding toil and difficulty in
lightly-manned ships, was soon performed on board the Queen's cruiser, by
the aid of yard and stay-tackles, to which the force of a hundred seamen
was applied. When four of these little attendants on the ship were in the
water, they were entered by their crews, prepared for serious service.
Officers, on whom Ludlow could rely, were put in command of the three
smallest, while he took charge of the fourth in person. When all were
ready, and each inferior had received his especial instructions, they
quitted the side of the vessel, pulling off, in diverging lines, into the
gloom of the ocean. The boat of Ludlow had not gone fifty fathoms, before
he was perfectly conscious of the inutility of a chase; for the obscurity
of the night was so great, as to render the spars of his own ship nearly
indistinct, even at that short distance. After pulling by compass some ten
or fifteen minutes, in a direction that carried him to windward of the
Coquette, the young man commanded the crew to cease rowing, and prepared
himself to await, patiently, for the result of his undertaking.

There was nothing to vary the monotony of such a scene, for an hour, but
the regular rolling of a sea that was but little agitated, a few
occasional strokes of the oars, that were given in order to keep the barge
in its place, or the heavy breathing of some smaller fish of the
cetaceous kind, as it rose to the surface to inhale the atmosphere. In no
quarter of the heavens was any