“A blessed, blessed thing, is wather!” exclaimed Biddy, this time finding the relief she sought, “and a thousand blessings on you, Mr. Mulford, who have niver done us anything but good.”

Rose looked a still higher eulogy on the young man, and even Mrs. Budd had something commendatory and grateful to say.  Jack Tier was silent, but he had all his eyes about him, as he now proved.

“We’ve all on us been so much taken up with our own affairs,” remarked the steward’s assistant, “that we’ve taken but little notice of the neighbourhood.  If that is n’t the brig, Mr. Mulford, running through this very passage, with stun’sails set alow and aloft, I do n’t know the Molly Swash when I see her!”

“The brig!” exclaimed the mate, recollecting the vessels he had seen at the break-of-day, for the first time in hours.  “Can it be possible that the craft I made out to the southward, is the brig?”

“Look, and judge for yourself, sir.  There she comes, like a race-horse, and if she holds her present course, she must pass somewhere within a mile or so of us, if we stay where we are.”

Mulford did look, as did all with him.  There was the Swash, sure enough, coming down before the wind, and under a cloud of canvas.  She might be still a league, or a league and a half distant, but, at the rate at which she was travelling, that distance would soon be past.  She was running through the passage, no doubt with a view to proceed to the Dry Tortugas, to look after the schooner, Spike having the hope that he had dodged his pursuers on the coast of Cuba.  The mate now looked for the ship, in the north-western board, believing, as he did, that she was the sloop-of-war.  That vessel had gone about, and was standing to the southward, on a taut bowline.  She was still a long way off, three or four leagues at least, but the change she had made in her position, since last seen, proved that she was a great sailer.  Then she was more than hull down, whereas, now, she was near enough to let the outline of a long, straight fabric be discovered beneath her canvas.

“It is hardly possible that Spike should not see the vessel here in the northern board,” Mulford observed to Tier, who had been examining the ship with him.  “The lookout is usually good on board the Swash, and, just now, should certainly be as good as common.  Spike is no dawdler with serious business before him.”

“He’s a willain!” muttered Jack Tier.

The mate regarded his companion with some surprise.  Jack was a very insignificant-looking personage in common, and one would scarcely pause to give him a second look, unless it might be to laugh at his rotundity and little waddling legs.  But, now, the mate fancied he was swelling with feelings that actually imparted somewhat more than usual stature and dignity to his appearance.  His face was full of indignation, and there was something about the eye, that to Mulford was inexplicable.  As Rose, however, had related to him the scene that took place on the islet, at the moment when Spike was departing, the mate supposed that Jack still felt a portion of the resentment that such a collision would be apt to create.  From the expression of Jack’s countenance at that instant, it struck him Spike might not be exactly safe, should accident put it in the power of the former to do him an injury.