"Wal," said he, "this here fog makes it very easy for a Moosoo to haul up alongside all of a suddent, an' ax you for your papers. An' what's more," he continued, dropping his voice to a lower tone, and stooping, to bring his mouth nearer to Claude's ear, "what's more, I don't know but what, at this very moment, there's a Moosoo railly an' truly a little mite nearer to us than I altogether keer for to hev him." "What!" exclaimed Claude, with a start; "do you really think so? What! near us, here in this fog?" "Railly an' truly," said Zac, solemnly, "that's my identical meanin'--jest it, exactly; an' 'tain't overly pleasant, no how. See here;" and Zac dropped his voice to still lower tones, and drew still nearer to Claude, as he continued--"see here, now; I'll tell you what happened jest now. As I was a standin' here, jest afore you come up, I thought I heerd voices out thar on the starboard quarter --voices--" "Voices!" said Claude. "O, nonsense! Voices! How can there be voices out there? It must have been the water." "Wal," continued Zac, still speaking in a low tone, "that's the very thing I thought when I fust heerd 'em; I thought, too, it must be the water. But, if you jest take the trouble to examine, you'll find that thur ain't enough motion in the water to make any sound at all. 'Tain't as if thar was a puffin' of the wind an a dashin' of the waves. Thar ain't no wind an' no waves, unfort'nat'ly; so it seems beyond a doubt that it must either be actooal voices, or else somethin' supernat'ral. An' for my part I'd give somethin' for the wind to rise jest a leetle mite, so's I could step off out o' this, an' git out o' hearin', at least." At this Claude was again silent for some time, thinking to himself whether the possibility of a French ship being near was to be wished or dreaded. Much was to be said on both sides. To himself it would, perhaps, be desirable; yet not so to Zac, although he tried to reassure the dejected skipper by telling him that if a French vessel should really be so near, it would be all the better, since his voyage would thereby be made all the shorter, for he himself could go aboard, and the Parson might return to Boston. But Zac refused to be so easily comforted. "No," said he; "once I git into their clutches, they'll never let me go; and as for the poor old Parson, why, they'll go an' turn her into a Papist priest. And that," he added, with a deep sigh, "would be too--almighty--bad!" Claude now found that Zac was in too despondent a mood to listen to what he called reason, and therefore he held his tongue. The idea that a French ship might be somewhere near, behind that wall of fog, had in it something which to him was not unpleasant, since it afforded some variety to the monotony of his situation. He stood, therefore, in silence, with his face turned towards the direction indicated by Zac, and listened intently, while the skipper stood in silence by his side, listening also.