THE SEA-WITCH.

CHAPTER I.

OUTWARD BOUND.





OUR story opens in that broad, far-reaching expanse of water which lies
deep and blue between the two hemispheres, some fifteen degrees north of
the equator, in the latitude of Cuba and the Cape Verd Islands. The
delightful trade winds had not fanned the sea on a finer summer's day
for a twelvemonth, and the waves were daintily swelling upon the heaving
bosom of the deep, as though indicating the respiration of the ocean. It
was scarcely a day's sail beyond the flow of the Caribbean Sea, that one
of those noblest results of man's handiwork, a fine ship, might have
been seen gracefully ploughing her course through the sky-blue waters of
the Atlantic. She was close-hauled on the larboard tack, steering
east-southeast, and to a sailor's eye presented a certain indescribable
something that gave her taut rig and saucy air a dash of mystery, which
would have set him to speculating at once as to her character and the
trade she followed.