The sensation here experienced, after at first relieving his uneasiness, with unforeseen efficacy soon began to remove it.  The less distant sight of that well-known boat—­showing it, not as before, half blended with the haze, but with outline defined, so that its individuality, like a man’s, was manifest; that boat, Rover by name, which, though now in strange seas, had often pressed the beach of Captain Delano’s home, and, brought to its threshold for repairs, had familiarly lain there, as a Newfoundland dog; the sight of that household, boat evoked a thousand trustful associations, which, contrasted with previous suspicions, filled him not only with lightsome confidence, but somehow with half humorous self-reproaches at his former lack of it.

“What, I, Amasa Delano—­Jack of the Beach, as they called me when a lad—­I, Amasa; the same that, duck-satchel in hand, used to paddle along the water-side to the school-house made from the old hulk—­I, little Jack of the Beach, that used to go berrying with cousin Nat and the rest; I to be murdered here at the ends of the earth, on board a haunted pirate-ship by a horrible Spaniard?  Too nonsensical to think of!  Who would murder Amasa Delano?  His conscience is clean.  There is some one above.  Fie, fie, Jack of the Beach! you are a child indeed; a child of the second childhood, old boy; you are beginning to dote and drule, I’m afraid.”

Light of heart and foot, he stepped aft, and there was met by Don Benito’s servant, who, with a pleasing expression, responsive to his own present feelings, informed him that his master had recovered from the effects of his coughing fit, and had just ordered him to go present his compliments to his good guest, Don Amasa, and say that he (Don Benito) would soon have the happiness to rejoin him.

There now, do you mark that? again thought Captain Delano, walking the poop.  What a donkey I was.  This kind gentleman who here sends me his kind compliments, he, but ten minutes ago, dark-lantern in had, was dodging round some old grind-stone in the hold, sharpening a hatchet for me, I thought.  Well, well; these long calms have a morbid effect on the mind, I’ve often heard, though I never believed it before.  Ha! glancing towards the boat; there’s Rover; good dog; a white bone in her mouth.  A pretty big bone though, seems to me.—­What?  Yes, she has fallen afoul of the bubbling tide-rip there.  It sets her the other way, too, for the time.  Patience.

It was now about noon, though, from the grayness of everything, it seemed to be getting towards dusk.

The calm was confirmed.  In the far distance, away from the influence of land, the leaden ocean seemed laid out and leaded up, it’s course finished, soul gone, defunct.  But the current from landward, where the ship was, increased; silently sweeping her further and further towards the tranced waters beyond.