There needs little explanation to render the circumstances which brought the royal cruiser up to town, intelligible to the reader.  As the morning approached, she had entered more deeply into the bay:  and when the light permitted, those on board her had been able to see that no vessel lay beneath the hills, nor in any of the more retired places of the estuary.  A fisherman, however, removed the last of their doubts, by reporting that he had seen a vessel, whose description answered that of the Water-Witch, passing the Narrows in the middle watch.  He added that a swiftly-rowing boat was, shortly after, seen pulling in the same direction.  This clue had been sufficient.  Ludlow made a signal for his own boats to close the passages of the Kilns and the Narrows, and then, as has been seen, he steered directly into the harbor.

When Ludlow found himself in the position just described, he turned all his attention to the double object of preserving his own vessel, and arresting that of the free-trader.  Though there was still a possibility of damaging the spars of the brigantine by firing across the land, the feebleness of his own crew, reduced as it was by more than half its numbers, the danger of doing injury to the farm-houses that were here and there placed along the low cliffs, and the necessity of preparation to meet the critical pass ahead, united to prevent the attempt.  The ship was no sooner fairly entered into the pass, be tween Blackwell’s and Nassau, than he issued an order to secure the guns that had been used, and to clear away the anchors.

“Cock-bill the bowers, Sir,” he hastily added, in his orders to Trysail.  “We are in no condition to sport with stock-and-fluke; have every thing ready to let go at a word; and see the grapnels ready,—­we will throw them aboard the smuggler as we close, and take him alive.  Once fast to the chain, we are yet strong enough to haul him in under our scuppers, and to capture him with the pumps!  Is the signal still abroad, for a pilot?”

“We keep it flying, Sir, but ’twill be a swift boat that overhauls us in this tide’s-way.  The Gate begins at yonder bend in the land, Captain Ludlow!”

“Keep it abroad; the lazy rogues are sometimes loitering in the cove this side the rocks, and chance may throw one of them aboard us, as we pass.  See to the anchors, Sir; the ship is driving through this channel, like a race-horse under the whip!”

The men were hurriedly piped to this duty while their young commander took his station on the poop, now anxiously examining the courses of the tides and the positions of the eddies, and now turning his eyes towards the brigantine, whose upper spars and white sails were to be seen, at the distance of two hundred fathoms, glancing past the trees of the island.  But miles and minutes seemed like rods and moments, in that swift current.  Trysail had just reported the anchors ready, when the ship swept up abreast of the cove,