the town, the place standing on a hill, like Porto Ferrajo, perfectly at their ease as regards fire-ships, English frigates, and the dangers of the seas.  But all this was a profound mystery to Cuffe and his companions, who had long been in the habit of putting the most favorable constructions on the results of their professional undertakings, and certainly not altogether without reason; and who nothing doubted that le Feu-Follet had, to use their own language, “laid her bones somewhere along-shore here.”

After two or three hours passed in fruitless search Cuffe determined to return to his ship.  He was a keen sportsman and had brought a fowling-piece with him in his gig, with a half-formed design of landing and whiling away the time, until the westerly wind came, among some marshes that he saw near the shore, but had been persuaded by Griffin not to venture.

“There must be woodcock in that wet ground, Griffin,” he said, as he reluctantly yielded a little in his intention; “and Winchester would fancy a bird exceedingly in a day or two.  I never was hit in my life that I did not feel a desire for game after the fever was gone.  Snipe, too, must live on the banks of that stream.  Snipe are coming in season now, Griffin?”

“It’s more likely, sir, that some of the privateersmen have got ashore on planks and empty casks, and are prowling about in the weeds, watching our boats.  Three or four of them would be too much for you, Captain Cuffe, as the scoundrels all carry knives as long as ship’s cutlasses.”

“I suppose your notion may be true; and I shall have to give it up.  Pull back to the frigate, Davy, and we’ll be off after some more of these French ragamuffins.”

This settled the matter.  In half an hour the boats were swinging at the Proserpine’s quarters; and three hours later the ship was under her canvas, standing slowly off the land.  That day, however, the zephyr was exceedingly light, and the sun set just as the ship got the small island of Pianosa abeam; when the air came from the northward, and the ship’s head was laid in to the eastward; the course lying between the land just mentioned and that of Elba.  All night the Proserpine was slowly fanning her way along the south side of the latter island, when, getting the southerly air again in the morning, she reappeared in the Canal of Piombino as the day advanced, precisely as she had done before, when first introduced to the acquaintance of the reader.  Cuffe had given orders to be called, as usual, when the light was about to return; it being a practice with him, in that active and pregnant war, to be on deck at such moments, in order to ascertain, with his own eyes, what the fortunes of the night had brought within his reach.

“Well, Mr. Griffin,” he said, as soon as he had received the salutation of the officer of the watch, “you have had a still night of it.  Yonder is the Point of Piombino, I see; and here we have got Elba and this little rocky island again on our larboard hand.  One day is surprisingly like another about these times, for us mariners in particular.”