"Certainly," said Pumpbolt, "I make no doubt but it is; and if this cursed mist would only clear away, I would undertake to take the Midge, were she twenty tons bigger, slap across it, and pledge my credit she should clear it as sound as a bell; for we have a noble moon, and Brail there is quite confident about the river; besides, I took the bearings of the westernmost channel with the eastern point this very morning. No fear, if it would _but_ clear. See if the moonshine has not made the fog quite gauzelike, as if it were bright and luminous of itself--Oh that it would rise!" The four little reefers were at this moment clustered forward, close to me; we were riding with our head up the river, and I saw one or two old hands alongside of them, all looking out, and stretching their necks and straining their eyes in a vain attempt to pierce the fog. "What is that?"--It was a greasy cheep, and then a rattle, as if a loose purchase or fall had suddenly been shaken, so as to make the blocks clatter, and then hauled taught, as if people were having a pull at the boom-sheet of a schooner, or other fore-and-aft rigged vessel. "What is that, indeed?" said Sprawl. "Why, look there--look there, Lanyard--see you nothing there?" "No, I see nothing--eh--faith, but I do--why, what is that?--Stand by, small-arm, men--go to quarters the rest of ye--quick--Poo, it is simply a thicker wreath of mist, after all." Pumpbolt was standing by, but the object that we thought we had seen descending the river was no longer visible, and I began to think it was fancy. Suddenly the mist thinned. "There is the spectre-like object once more," I shouted. "By all that is portentous, it is a large schooner, one of these slaving villains, who thinks he can steal past us under cover of the mist--There--there he is on our quarter--there are his royal and gaff topsail over the thickest of the fog--now his jib is stealing out of it." "Clear away both guns there," sung out the fourth lieutenant. "We shall give him a rally as he passes, if he won't speak." The strange sail continued to slide noiselessly down the river. "What vessel is that?"--No answer--"Speak, or I will fire into you."--All silent--"Take good aim, men--fire!" Both cannon were discharged, and, as if by magic, the watery veil that had hid every thing from our view rose from the bosom of the midnight river, and hung above our mast-head in a luminous fleecy cloud, which the moonbeams impregnated, but did not pierce, being diffused by it over the whole scene below in a mild radiance, like that cast by the ground glass globe of a sinumbra lamp,--and disclosing suddenly the dark stream above and on each side of us, covered with canoes within pistol-shot; while the large schooner that we had fired into, instead of making demonstrations to escape over the bar, now shortened sail, and bore up resolutely across our bows, firing two guns and a volley of small arms into us in passing.