The strange and mysterious craft was a brigantine of that mixed construction, which is much used, even in the most ancient and classical seas of the other hemisphere, and which is supposed to unite the advantages of both a square and of a fore-and-aft rigged vessel, but which is nowhere seen to display the same beauty of form, and symmetry of equipment, as on the coasts of this Union.  The first and smallest of its masts had all the complicated machinery of a ship, with its superior and inferior spars, its wider reaching, though light and manageable yards, and its various sails, shaped and arranged to meet every vicissitude and caprice of the winds; while the latter, or larger of the two, rose like the straight trunk of a pine from the hull, simple in its cordage, and spreading a single sheet of canvas, that, in itself, was sufficient to drive the fabric with vast velocity through the water.  The hull was low, graceful in its outlines, dark as the raven’s wing, and so modelled as to float on its element like a sea-gull riding the billows.  There were many delicate and attenuated lines among its spars, which were intended to spread broader folds of canvas to the light airs, when necessary; but these additions to the tracery of the machine, which added so much to its beauty by day, were now, seen as it was by the dimmer and more treacherous rays of the moon, scarcely visible.  In short, as the vessel had entered the Cove floating with the tide, and it was so singularly graceful and fairy-like in form, that Alida, at first, was fain to discredit her senses, and to believe it no more than some illusion of the fancy.  Like most others, she was ignorant of the temporary inlet, and, under the circumstances, it was not difficult to lend a momentary credence to so pleasing an idea.

But the delusion was only momentary.  The brigantine turned in its course, and, gliding into the part of the Cove where the curvature of the shores offered most protection from the winds and waves, and perhaps from curious eyes, its motion ceased.  A heavy plunge in the water was audible even at the villa, and Alida then knew that an anchor had fallen into the bay.

Although the coast of North America offered little to invite lawless depredation, and it was in general believed to be so safe, yet the possibility that cupidity might be invited by the retired situation of her uncle’s villa, did not fail to suggest itself to the mind of the young heiress.  Both she and her guardian were reputed to be wealthy; and disappointment, on the open sea, might drive desperate men to the commission of crimes that in more prosperous moments would not suggest themselves.  The freebooters were said to have formerly visited the coast of the neighboring island, and men were just then commencing those excavations for hidden treasures and secreted booty, which have been, at distant intervals, continued to our own time.