undistrustful good-nature, not liable, except on extraordinary and
repeated incentives, and hardly then, to indulge in personal alarms, any
way involving the imputation of malign evil in man. Whether, in view of
what humanity is capable, such a trait implies, along with a benevolent
heart, more than ordinary quickness and accuracy of intellectual
perception, may be left to the wise to determine.

But whatever misgivings might have obtruded on first seeing the
stranger, would almost, in any seaman's mind, have been dissipated by
observing that, the ship, in navigating into the harbor, was drawing too
near the land; a sunken reef making out off her bow. This seemed to
prove her a stranger, indeed, not only to the sealer, but the island;
consequently, she could be no wonted freebooter on that ocean. With no
small interest, Captain Delano continued to watch her--a proceeding not
much facilitated by the vapors partly mantling the hull, through which
the far matin light from her cabin streamed equivocally enough; much
like the sun--by this time hemisphered on the rim of the horizon, and,
apparently, in company with the strange ship entering the harbor--which,
wimpled by the same low, creeping clouds, showed not unlike a Lima
intriguante's one sinister eye peering across the Plaza from the Indian
loop-hole of her dusk _saya-y-manta._

It might have been but a deception of the vapors, but, the longer the
stranger was watched the more singular appeared her manoeuvres. Ere
long it seemed hard to decide whether she meant to come in or no--what
she wanted, or what she was about. The wind, which had breezed up a
little during the night, was now extremely light and baffling, which the
more increased the apparent uncertainty of her movements. Surmising, at
last, that it might be a ship in distress, Captain Delano ordered his
whale-boat to be dropped, and, much to the wary opposition of his mate,