‘Starboard—starboard. Keep her a little away, master, the channel is on the lee-bow,’ cried Disco. The course of the piragua was altered accordingly, and glancing ahead, I saw the streak of dark water, leading to the open sea; at the same time that the fleet of pearl fishers answered the alarm from ashore, by kindling torches, waving lanterns, and shouting and blowing horns, just as they had done the night that the privateer had swooped down in the centre of them, and carried off one of the very best in his clutch. At this moment, we having drawn clear of the sand hills on shore, the breeze freshened, sweeping down the coast, heavy with the dew of the night air. The light sails swelled stiffly out, the sheets tautened, the thin supple masts swayed and creaked, and the few ropes which stayed them upon the weather-side stretched out as rigid as iron-bars. And yet the piragua flew by every swell which rolled in from the offing—not plunging into the great green seas, and flashing the foam sparklingly up into the air, but moving rather like a bird, which, with spreading and far-stretched pinion, just glances over the sea, rather flying than swimming—borne more by the winds than the waves. Truly, I had never sailed in so wonderfully-fashioned a craft—so thin and slight was her construction, that she appeared, as it were, to yield, and bend, and quiver in the seas—but ever on, gaily and lightsomely, she went, sliding, as it were, without noise and without shock, leaping with a quick, buoyant, bounding motion, right over and over the swells, which now, as the water shoaled upon the bar, began to roll by us, white with milky foam. Verily, Peralta did well when he likened his piragua to a noiseless gliding ghost. While I was still wrapped in amazement at the performances of the canoe, she was flying across the bar in the very midst of the fleet of pearl fishers. The whole thing passed over me like a vision—a dream of flashing foaming water, plunging and dripping ships, with their canvas flapping, and their booms, and yards, and ropes, creaking and moaning, and rattling together—of fierce, eager faces, and hurrying, dusky forms, running on the decks, leaping into the riggings, flashing their torches and lanterns; shouting, yelling, and hailing the piragua and Peralta to lie to, and put about—and some of them flourishing glimmering knives and firing pistols in the air.