The day had been unusually sultry. A light breeze had ruffled the ocean in the morning, but about two bells in the afternoon watch the wind had died away, and an almost dead calm had succeeded. The sea became as flat as a mirror, its polished surface only heaving in long gentle undulations, like the bosom of some sleeping monster. Not a ripple broke upon its whole extent. The sky was cloudless: the rays of the sun, pouring almost vertically downwards, and penetrating even through the awning overhead, heated the deck till it became like a furnace beneath the feet. The air was close, stifling, noisome. The men cowered under the shade of the bulwarks, or hung panting over the schooner’s side. The sea glowed like molten silver. Occasionally a slight gurgling sound under the cutwater would remind us that the deep was not wholly motionless; but excepting this, and now and then the feeble creaking of a block, no sound broke the oppressive silence around. At length, however, a slight breeze was seen ruffling the sea upon the seaboard; and when the wind came up toward us, curling the ocean here and there into mimic breakers, and when especially it swept with refreshing coolness across our decks, we experienced sensations of the most exquisite delight, and such as no one can imagine, who has not felt, after a sultry calm, the first kiss of the long-wished-for breeze. A new life was imparted into our men. The sails were set, and we once more began to hear the sound of the wind in the hamper, and of the waves rushing along our sides. It was, however, only a two-knot breeze. Such, with but little variation, it had continued to be up to the discovery of the stranger. For half an hour and more after our look-outs had detected the sail to windward, we managed to keep away sufficiently to maintain the distance we had first possessed. But gradually the wind freshened; the billows began to roll their white crests over in the sun-light; the sails strained under the press of the breeze; and the waters, rippling loud and fast under our bows, went plashing along our sides with a gurgling noise, and then hissed by the rudder as they were whirled away astern. “What a provoking breeze!” said Westbrook. “Here we are at a convenient distance, as O’Shaughnessy would say, from yonder chap, having besides the whole night before us to plan an escape from his clutches, and lo! a breeze springs up just when it ought to be calm, leaving us at the mercy of our huge friend up here, with a prospect of dangling from a yard-arm if he turns out to be an Englishman.” “Shure an we’ll blow ourselves out of water,” said O’Shaughnessy himself, happening to overhear the conclusion of Westbrook’s remark, “rayther than do that same.” “And into it also, eh!” said Westbrook. O’Shaughnessy made no reply, but shrugging his shoulders, the conversation dropped.