perfect labyrinth with the limbs, he stretched his body forward so far as
to lean out of the window, riveting his eyes also on the ship, which still
attracted the gaze of his companion.

"Do you know, Pardy," he said, "that strange thoughts and cruel misgivings
have come over me concerning that very vessel? They say she is a slaver
come in for wood and water, and there she has been a week, and not a stick
bigger than an oar has gone up her side, and I'll engage that ten drops
from Jamaica have gone on board her, to one from the spring. Then you may
see she is anchored in such a way that but one of the guns from the
battery can touch her; whereas, had she been a real timid trader, she
would naturally have got into a place where, if a straggling picaroon
should come into the port, he would have found her in the very hottest of
the fire."

"You have an ingenious turn with you, good-man," returned the wondering
countryman; "now a ship might have lain on the battery island itself, and
I would have hardly noticed the thing."

"'Tis use and experience, Pardon, that makes men of us all. I should know
something of batteries, having seen so many wars, and I served a campaign
of a week, in that very fort, when the rumour came that the French were
sending cruisers from Louisburg down the coast. For that matter, my duty
was to stand sentinel over that very cannon; and, if I have done the thing
once, I have twenty times squinted along the piece, to see in what quarter
it would send its shot, provided such a calamity should arrive as that it
might become necessary to fire it loaded with real warlike balls."

"And who are these?" demanded Pardon, with that species of sluggish
curiosity which had been awakened by the wonders related by the other: