The wind fell. "Out boats," was the order. Captain Fisher went himself. The chase was a large schooner. A boat was seen to put off from her and pull towards the surf: whether or not she could get through it seemed a question. The English seamen bent to their oars; they were resolved to reach the chase before she could again get the breeze. They clashed alongside, and soon sprang over her bulwarks. No resistance was made. Poor Orlo, glancing round, discovered, to his disappointment, that she had no slaves on board. The master, it was found, had landed with the specie for the purchase of slaves. One of the slave crew--a mate, he looked like--appeared to have a peculiar thickness under his knees; Orlo detected it, and pointed it out to the captain. The master-at-arms was ordered to examine him. Most unwillingly the fellow tucked up his trousers--grinning horribly at Orlo all the time--when he was found to have on a pair of garters, out of each of which rolled thirty doubloons. The schooner's head being put off-shore, the boats took her in tow, till, a breeze springing up, sail was made on her for Sierra Leone. The next morning commenced with a thick mist and rain. Orlo, from his quickness of vision, was now constantly employed as one of the look-outs. He was on the watch to go aloft directly it gave signs of clearing. His impatience, however, did not allow him to remain till the mist dispersed. Away aloft he went, observing, "It must fine soon; den I see sip." He had not been many minutes at the masthead when he shouted, "Sip in-shore!" He had discovered her royals above the mist. Sail was instantly made in chase. Some time elapsed before the _Sea Sprite_ was discovered. Suddenly the mist cleared, and there appeared close in-shore a large American slave ship. There was no doubt about her, with her great beam and wide spread of canvas. Hoisting American colours, the stranger made all sail to escape. He was standing off the land; but as on that course he would have had to pass unpleasantly near the corvette, he tacked in-shore, and then bore away along the surf, hoping thus, with his large sails, to draw ahead and escape. The light wind appeared to favour him, but Captain Fisher determined that it should not. Ordering the boats away, he took one with a strongly-armed crew, and pulled to windward to cut off the chase, while two others went to leeward, so that his chance of escaping was small indeed. The slave captain seemed to think so likewise. He dared not meet in fight the true-hearted British seaman. Regardless of the risk he and his own crew would run, of the destruction he was about to bring on hundreds of his fellow-creatures, the savage slave captain put up his helm, and ran the ship under all sail towards the shore.