Ludlow stood on the forecastle, accompanied by the master.  Here he lent all his senses to the appearance of the elements, and to the signs of the moment.  Wind there was none, though occasionally a breath of hot air came from the land, like the first efforts of the night-breeze.  The heavens were clouded, though a few thoughtful stars glimmered between the masses of vapor.

“A calmer night never shut in the Americas!” said the veteran Trysail, shaking his head doubtingly and speaking in a suppressed and cautious tone.  “I am one of those, Captain Ludlow, who think more than half the virtue is out of a ship when her anchor is down!”

“With a weakened crew, it may be better for us that the people have no yards to handle, nor any bowlines to steady.  All our care can be given to defence.”

“This is much like telling the hawk he can fight the better with a clipped wing, since he has not the trouble of flying!  The nature of a ship is motion, and the merit of a seaman is judicious and lively handling;—­but of what use is complaining, since it will neither lift an anchor nor fill a sail?  What is your opinion, Captain Ludlow, concerning an after life, and of all those matters one occasionally hears of it he happens to drift in the way of a church?”

“The question is broad as the ocean, my good friend, and a fitting answer might lead us into abstrusities deeper than any problem in our trigonometry.—­Was that the stroke of an oar?”

“’Twas a land noise.  Well, I am no great navigator among the crooked channels of religion.  Every new argument is a sand-bar, or a shoal, that obliges me to tack and stand off again; else I might have been a bishop, for any thing the world knows to the contrary.  ’Tis a gloomy night, Captain Ludlow, and one that is sparing of its stars.  I never knew luck come of an expedition on which a natural light did not fall!”

“So much the worse for those who seek to harm us.—­I surely heard an oar in the row-lock!”

“It came from the shore, and had the sound of the land about it;” quietly returned the master, who still kept his look riveted on the heavens.  “This world, in which we live, Captain Ludlow, is one of extraordinary uses; but that, to which we are steering, is still more unaccountable.  They say that worlds are sailing above us, like ships in a clear sea; and there are people who believe, that when we take our departure from this planet, we are only bound to another, in which we are to be rated according to our own deeds here; which is much the same as being drafted for a new ship, with a certificate of service in one’s pocket.”

“The resemblance is perfect;” returned the other leaning far over a timber-head, to catch the smallest sound that might come from the ocean.  “That was no more than the blowing of a porpoise!”

“It was strong enough for the puff of a whale.  There is no scarcity of big fish on the coast of this island, and bold harpooners are the men who are scattered about on the sandy downs, here-away, to the northward.  I once sailed with an officer who knew the name, of every star in the heavens, and often have I passed hours in listening to his history of their magnitude and character, during the middle watches.  It was his opinion, that there is but one navigator for all the rovers of the air, whether meteors, comets, or planets.”