rd. Had we been close in with the land, this would not have
signified; but before we could beat up again, a continuance of northerly
and easterly gales drove us to the southward of the Gut of Gibraltar.
When there, they left us in a dead calm, with our sails idly flapping
against the masts, and rolling bulwarks under in the heavy swell they
had caused on Old Ocean's bosom.

The sun arose over the distant Morocco coast--not then in sight,
however--and sent his rays down on our decks with an ardour which made
the pitch bubble and hiss up out of the seams. Not a ripple disturbed
the rounded smoothness of the heaving swells, while even the bubbles
thrown off from our sides refused to float to any distance from us. We
were not the only occupants of our own horizon. Some eight miles off,
or so, there was another brig rolling away much in the same fashion that
we were. All hands were anxious for a breeze, as we in no way liked the
heat after the cold of a northern clime, though it mattered nothing to
us whether we made a quick or a slow passage. We whistled, as sailors
always whistle when they want a breeze; but the breeze did not come the
faster for all our whistling. I never knew it do so, with all my
experience. What folly, indeed, in man to suppose that He who rules the
winds and waves should alter his laws in consequence of their puny
efforts to make a wind with their mouths! In those days, of course, I
did not think about the matter. I whistled because others whistled; but
if any of us had been asked on what ground we founded our hope that the
wind would come in consequence, I suspect that we should have been very
much puzzled to return a satisfactory answer.

"What countryman do you make that craft out there to be, Mr Gale?" said
the captain, handing the mate the glass through which he had been
looking.

"Not an Englishman, certainly," was the reply, after the usual steady
glance. "I should say, from the whiteness of her canvas, and her light
upper-rigging, that she belongs to some of those turban-wearing people
along the African coast in there, or up the Straits. They are seldom
pleasant customers for an unarmed craft to come across."

"I had formed the same idea of her," observed Captain Helfrich. "We
know pretty well, however, how to deal with such gentry: and if she come
across us, she'll find that she has caught a Tartar."

I told Peter what I had heard; and he, I found, after looking through
the