of himself when the relief passed him on his way to the wheel, at eight bells. Inquiring the hour, he got into the mizen rigging, with a night-glass, and swept the horizon in search of the Foam. Nothing could be made out, the darkness having settled upon the water in a way to circumscribe the visible horizon to very narrow limits.

"This may do," he muttered to himself, as he swung off by a rope, and alighted again on the planks of the deck. Mr. Leach was summoned, and an order was passed for the relieved watch to remain on deck for duty.

When all was ready, the first mate went through the ship, seeing that all the candles were extinguished, or that the hoods were drawn over the sky-lights, in such a way as to conceal any rays that might gleam upwards from the cabins. At the same time attention was paid to the binnacle-lamp. This precaution observed, the people went to work to reduce the sail, and in the course of twenty minutes they had got in the studding-sails, and all the standing canvass to the topsails, the

fore-course, and a forward staysail. The three topsails were then reefed, with sundry urgent commands to the crew to be active. "The

Englishman coming up like a horse, all this time, no doubt."

This much effected, the hands returned on deck, as much amazed at the several arrangements as if the order had been to cut away the masts.

"If we had a few guns, and were a little stronger-handed," growled an old salt to the second-mate, as he hitched up his trousers, and rolled over his quid, "I should think the hard one, aft, had been stripping for a fight; but as it is, we have nothing to carry on the war with, unless we throw sea-biscuits into the enemy!"

"Stand by to ware!" called out the captain from the quarter-deck.

The men sprang to the braces, and the bows of the ship fell off gradually, as the yards yielded slowly to the drag. In a minute the Montauk was rolling dead before it, and her broadside came sweeping up to the wind with

the ship's head to the eastward.

This new

direction in the course had the double effect of hauling off the land, and of diverging at more than right angles from the line of sailing of the Foam, if that ship still continued in pursuit. The seamen nodded their heads at each other in approbation, for all now as well understood the meaning of the change as if it had been explained to them verbally.

The revolution on deck produced as sudden a revolution below. The ship was no longer running easily on an even keel, but was pitching violently into a head-beating sea, and the wind, which a few minutes before, was scarcely felt to blow, was now whistling its hundred strains among the cordage. Some sought their berths, among whom were Mr. Sharp and Mr. Dodge; some hurried up the stairs to learn the reason, and all broke up their avocations for the night.

Captain Truck had the usual number of questions to answer, which he did in the following succinct and graphic manner, a reply that we hope will prove as satisfactory to the

reader, as it was made, perforce, to be satisfactory to the curious on board.

"Had we stood on an hour longer, gentlemen, we should have been lost on the coast of Cornwall!" he said, pithily: "had we stopped where we were, the sloop-of-war would have been down upon us in twenty minutes: by changing the course, in the way you have seen, he may get to leeward of us; if he find it out, he may change his own course, in the dark being as likely to go wrong as to go right; or he may stand in, and set up the ribs of his majesty's ship Foam to dry among the rocks of the Lizard, where I hope all her people will get safely ashore, dry shod." "After waiting the result anxiously for an hour, the passengers retired to their rooms one by one; but Captain Truck did not quit the deck until the middle watch was set. Paul Blunt heard him enter his state-room, which was next to his own, and putting out his head, he inquired the news above. The worthy master had discovered something about this young man which created a respect for his

nautical information, for he never misapplied a term, and he invariably answered all his questions promptly, and with respect.

"Dirtier, and dirtier," he said, in defiance of Mr. Dodge's judgment in language, pulling off his pea-jacket, and laying aside his sou'wester," a cap-full of wind, with just enough drizzle to take the comfort out of a man, and lacker him down like a boot."

"The ship has gone about ?"

"Like a dancing-master with two toes. We have got her head to southward and westward again; another reef in the topsails," (which word Mr. Truck pronounced torsails, with great unction), "England well under our lee, and the Atlantic ocean right before us. Six hours on this course, and we make a fair wind of it."

"And the sloop?"

66

Well, Mr. Blunt, I can give no direct account of her. She has dropped in along-shore, I suspect, where she is clawing off, like a boy climbing a hillock of ice on his hands and knees; or is flying about among the other