CHAPTER VI. Talbot and Mary were successful in reaching the city unpursued, and had been four days in the American Consul’s house, before, through his exertions, they discovered the departure and destination of Frank Gillespie. The sister was grievously distressed, and mourned her brother as dead, but Talbot pledged himself to follow and attempt his rescue, and although the fractured bone of her arm was not well knit together, she determined to accompany her lover as far as she could. Talbot was provoked to the resolution, to say nothing of a more generous impulse, by the refusal of the Spanish authorities to take cognizance of the subject. And Mary felt that without impropriety she could proceed to some one of the small ports on the route to Vera Cruz, if not to the latter place itself. She hired a servant to supply the place of the one drowned in the privateer, and felt more reconciled to the peril to which Talbot would be exposed, from the assurance of Gonzalez that he would share the enterprise. The latter, dreading more assassination by some of the connections of the late count, than any legal investigation, kept himself secreted in the city, but was frequently visited by Talbot. The only vessel in port bound in the direction of Vera Cruz was an American brig, advertised for Sisal. In her they engaged their passage, and after night-fall Gonzalez, in disguise, accompanied them on board. At break-of-day the next morning, they sailed with a fair wind, and had gained some distance by sunset, when it fell calm, and with the land upon one side, and an expanse of water on the other, the vessel rode with graceful ease upon a prolonged but gentle undulation. The golden rays of the setting sun mingled in the zenith with the soft and silvery light of the moon in her meridian, and a long and lovely twilight followed. Seated on deck, apart from their companions, (for Gonzalez was too considerate to intrude,) Mary and her lover mused long and deeply. The hour and the scene were calculated to dispel their anxieties and to soothe their cares. When either was depressed—he, with the sad thought that of all his race he stood alone—she, that she was an orphan, and that her brother was perhaps lost to her forever, a glance around and above would give their thoughts a holier and more soothing direction; for the works of the Great Architect, the teeming earth, the slumbering sea, the brilliant sky, all proclaimed in language unheard but _felt_ that mercy is His great and most peculiar attribute. It was indeed a lovely scene! Directly overhead, the moon shone forth in serene and unclouded lustre; a little lower, the fiery Mars peered forth; then the resplendent orb of Jupiter, and in the same direct line, but just above the horizon, the beautiful Venus sunk to rest, enveloped in a mantle yet rich with the gorgeous rays of the sun which had preceded her. They remained on deck until a late hour of the night, for whenever they went