Having commanded the attendance of two or three officers and as many soldiers, the commandante proceeded to the spot, guided by his first informant, and was convinced, as soon as he saw the crushed and mutilated mass, that it was no other than his unhappy officer. Having given orders for transporting the body to town, he returned to his family, who, although aware, from his abstracted and pensive manner, that something had happened to discompose him, forbore to ask any questions--a line of conduct which, by the way, we would most earnestly recommend to all wives and daughters. Isabella's mind was too much occupied with her own thoughts to notice the silence and melancholy of her uncle; she ate nothing, but her aunt and cousins attributed her want of appetite to the fright of the preceding evening; as her eyes met their kind and anxious looks, and she thought of her determination to quit them forever, she could not restrain her tears; but rising hastily from the table, she took shelter from observation and questioning in her own chamber. CHAPTER XVII. ---- I did compound A certain stuff, which, being ta'en, would cease The present powers of life; but in short time, All offices of nature should again Do their due functions. CYMBELINE. Shortly after the sea-breeze had set in--that is, between eleven and twelve o'clock--a sail was discovered in the western horizon, standing in for the land; which sail the commander of the Albatross, in a short time, made out, with the help of his glass, to be the guarda-costa, to his no small vexation and disappointment. She stood in, however; but instead of anchoring as usual, in what may be called the outer harbor, she ran close in to the landing-place, furled her sails, and then, to Captain Williams's great relief, sent down her fore-yard, stripped it of the sail and rigging, and launched it overboard. Two boats, full of men, were soon seen towing it ashore, the spar having been "sprung" in one of those sudden and violent "flaws" of wind so peculiar to high and mountainous coasts. All this was extremely gratifying to the commander of the American ship; in the first place the Venganza (for that was the warlike name of this redoubtable man-of-war), by lying so far up the harbor, was out of the line between the Albatross and the point where it was intended to send a boat that night; and secondly, the absence of so indispensable a spar as the fore-yard would render pursuit impossible.