Sometimes it fell so low, that we could hear but a faint and distant hum. Anon it rose, and pealed, and rung so gloriously out, that I could discern the very syllables of that mighty chorus, of ‘Jubilate, Jubilate, Jubilate. Amen.’ At length the organ ceased, and there was silence. ‘Very well sung,’ said Simon Radley, who pulled the stroke-oar, ‘and a very good psalm.’ Our solemn moods seldom lasted long. Howbeit, I was sunk in musing. The grave and solemn season of a tranquil night invokes like thoughts. I looked at our muffled oars, and thought how, darkling, we skulked upon the water, watching for our prey; and, as I mused, I could not help hearing, as it were, in my ears, the echo of a hollow sing-song voice, the utterance of that good man, but somewhat wearisome preacher, the Rev. Michael Wylieson, of Kirk Leslie, in Fife, who loved to take for his text the verse which speaks of a certain coming, as like unto the coming of a thief in the night. But all this lasted only for a minute; I started up, crying— ‘Pull, my men, pull—we’ve come to seek a rich galleon, and not to list the droning of chests full of whistles.’ And so we stole cautiously on, until there rose, cutting the starry skies ahead of us, the tall masts of several ships of price. Which of these was the patache? We gazed and whispered, and while we whispered, there suddenly rose, as it seemed from the water, not a score fathoms ahead of us, a loud voice singing, in the Spanish language, and presently we discovered a small dark object, like a canoe, very low in the water, with the form of one man on board. As we gazed, the figure moved and turned; then appearing to observe the boat, the man stopped in his song, and bursting into a laugh, so that one could discern he was a negro, called out to us in bad Spanish,— ‘You may as good go home to your hammocks, the pisareros (that is a kind of fish) will not bite till the tide turn, or the moon rises.’ ‘All is well, he suspects nothing,’ I whispered; ‘let us make sure of him.’ And so, as my comrades bent to their oars, I replied with a sort of imitation of the song which the fisherman, for such he was, had been singing, and at which he laughed again in his peculiar manner. But his mirth did not last long. Just as the shallop came with somewhat of a rude surge against the canoe, a couple of muscular hands grasped the poor negro by neck and arm, while I said in Spanish,— ‘Not a cry—not a sound—if you value your life.’ Immediately the poor man was pulled—all trembling and gasping in his bewilderment—into our boat, where he sat in the bottom, his white teeth chattering, and his eyes gleaming and rolling, while he sputtered out broken prayers in mingled Spanish and Latin. ‘Now,’ said I, still speaking the former language, ‘answer truly what is asked of you, and you shall come to no harm; but if you try to deal falsely by us, your blood be on your own head.’