The morning was neither very dark nor very light, it being easy to distinguish objects that were near, while those at a distance were necessarily lost in obscurity.  Availing herself of the circumstance, Rose went as far as the gangway, to ascertain if the cook were at his post.  She saw him lying near his galley, in as profound a sleep as any of the crew.  This she felt to be wrong, and she felt alarmed, though she knew not why.  Perhaps it was the consciousness of being the only person up and awake at that hour of deepest night, in a vessel so situated as the Swash, and in a climate in which hurricanes seem to be the natural offspring of the air.  Some one must be aroused, and her tastes, feelings, and judgment, all pointed to Harry Mulford as the person she ought to awaken.  He slept habitually in his clothes—­the lightest summer dress of the tropics; and the window of his little state-room was always open for air.  Moving lightly to the place, Rose laid her own little, soft hand on the arm of the young man, when the latter was on his feet in an instant.  A single moment only was necessary to regain his consciousness, when Mulford left the state-room and joined Rose on the quarter-deck.

“Why am I called, Rose,” the young man asked, attempering his voice to the calm that reigned around him; “and why am I called by you?”

Rose explained the state of the brig, and the feeling which induced her to awaken him.  With woman’s gentleness she now expressed her regret for having robbed Harry of his rest; had she reflected a moment, she might have kept watch herself, and allowed him to obtain the sleep he must surely so much require.

But Mulford laughed at this; protested he had never been awakened at a more favourable moment, and would have sworn, had it been proper, that a minute’s further sleep would have been too much for him.  After these first explanations, Mulford walked round the decks, carefully felt how much strain there was on the purchases, and rejoined Rose to report that all was right, and that he did not consider it necessary to call even the cook.  The black was an idler in no sense but that of keeping watch, and he had toiled the past day as much as any of the men, though it was not exactly at the pumps.

A long and semi-confidential conversation now occurred between Harry and Rose.  They talked of Spike, the brig, and her cargo, and of the delusion of the captain’s widow.  It was scarcely possible that powder should be so much wanted at the Havanna as to render smuggling, at so much cost, a profitable adventure; and Mulford admitted his convictions that the pretended flour was originally intended for Mexico.  Rose related the tenor of the conversation she had overheard between the two parties, Don Juan and Don Esteban, and the mate no longer doubted that it was Spike’s intention to sell the brig to the enemy.  She also alluded to what had passed between herself and the stranger.