“I t’ink a wench’s tongue nebber satisfy!  What for tell a whole world, when Bonnie go to bed?  He sleep for heself, and he no sleep for ’e neighborhood!  Dere!  A man can’t t’ink of ebery t’ing, in a minute.  Here a ribbon long enough to hang heself—­take him, and den remem’er, Phyllis, dat you be ’e wife of a man who hab care on he shoul’er.”

Bonnie then set up another laugh, in which his partner, having quitted her scullery to seize the gift, which in its colors resembled the skin of a garter-snake, did not fail to join, through mere excess of animal delight.  The effect of the gift, however, was to leave the negro to make his observations, without any further interruption from one who was a little too apt to disturb his solitude.

A boat was now seen to pull out from among the bushes that lined the shore; and Bonnie was enabled to distinguish, in its stern-sheets, the persons of his master, Ludlow, and the Patroon.  He had been acquainted with the seizure of the Coquette’s barge, the preceding night, and of the confinement of the crew.  Its appearance in that place, therefore, occasioned no new surprise.  But the time which past while the men were rowing up to the sloop-of-war, was filled with minutes of increasing interest.  The black abandoned his hoe, and took a position on the side of the mountain, that gave him a view of the whole bay.  So long as the mysteries of the Lust in Rust had been confined to the ordinary combinations of a secret trade, he had been fully able to comprehend them; but now that there apparently existed an alliance so unnatural as one between his master and the cruiser of the crown, he felt the necessity of double observation and of greater thought.

A far more enlightened mind than that of the slave, might have been excited by the expectation, and the objects which now presented themselves, especially if sufficiently prepared for events, by a knowledge of the two vessels in sight.  Though the wind still hung at east, the cloud above the mouth of the Raritan had at length begun to rise.  The broad fleeces of white vapor, that had lain the whole morning over the continent, were rapidly uniting; and they formed already a dark and dense mass, that floated in the bottom of the estuary, threatening shortly to roll over the whole of its wide waters.  The air was getting lighter, and variable; and while the wash of the surf sounded still more audible, its roll upon the beach was less regular than in the earlier hours of the day.  Such was the state of the two elements, when the boat touched the side of the ship.  In a minute it was hanging by its tackles, high in the air; and then it disappeared, in the bosom of the dark mass.