Thar ain't no wind an' no waves, unfort'nat'ly; so it seems beyond a doubt that it must either be actooal voices, or else somethin' supernat'ral. An' for my part I'd give somethin' for the wind to rise jest a leetle mite, so's I could step off out o' this, an' git out o' hearin', at least."

At this Claude was again silent for some time, thinking to himself whether the possibility of a French ship being near was to be wished or dreaded. Much was to be said on both sides. To himself it would, perhaps, be desirable; yet not so to Zac, although he tried to reassure the dejected skipper by telling him that if a French vessel should really be so near, it would be all the better, since his voyage would thereby be made all the shorter, for he himself could go aboard, and the Parson might return to Boston. But Zac refused to be so easily comforted.

"No," said he; "once I git into their clutches, they'll never let me go; and as for the poor old Parson, why, they'll go an' turn her into a Papist priest. And that," he added, with a deep sigh, "would be too—almighty—bad!"

Claude now found that Zac was in too despondent a mood to listen to what he called reason, and therefore he held his tongue. The idea that a French ship might be somewhere near, behind that wall of fog, had in it something which to him was not unpleasant, since it afforded some variety to the monotony of his situation. He stood, therefore, in silence, with his face turned towards the direction indicated by Zac, and listened intently, while the skipper stood in silence by his side, listening also.

There was no wind whatever. The water was quite smooth, and the Parson rose and fell at the slow undulations of the long ocean rollers, while at every motion the spars creaked and the sails flapped idly. All around there arose a gray wall of fog, deep, dense, and fixed, which shut them in on every side, while overhead the sky itself was concealed from view by the same dull-gray canopy. Behind that wall of fog anything might lie concealed; the whole French fleet might be there, without those on board the Parson being anything the wiser. This Claude felt, and as he thought of the possibility of this, he began to see that Zac's anxiety was very well founded, and that if the Parson should be captured it would be no easy task to deliver her from the grasp of the captor. Still there came no further sounds, and Claude, after listening for a long time without hearing anything, began, at length, to conclude that Zac had been deceived.

"Don't you think," he asked, "that it may, after all, have been the rustle of the sails, or the creaking of the spars?"

Zac shook his head.

"No," said he; "I've heerd it twice; an' I know very well all the sounds that sails an' spars can make; an' I don't see as how I can be mistook. O, no; it was human voice, an' nothin' else in natur'. I wouldn't mind it a mite if I could do anythin'. But to set here an' jest git caught, like a rat in a trap, is what I call too—almighty—bad!"

At this very instant, and while Zac was yet speaking, there came through the fog the sound of a voice. Claude heard it, and Zac also. The latter grasped the arm of his friend, and held his breath. It was a human voice. There was not the slightest doubt now of that. Words had been spoken, but they were unintelligible. They listened still. There was silence for a few moments, and then the silence was broken once more. Words were again heard. They were French, and they heard them this time with perfect distinctness. They were these:—

"Put her head a little over this way."

CHAPTER II.

A MEETING IN MID OCEAN.

Put her head a little over this way!

They were French words. To Claude, of course, they were perfectly intelligible, though not so to Zac, who did not understand any language but his mother Yankee. Judging by the distinctness and the loudness of the sound, the speaker could not be very far away. The voice seemed to come from the water astern. No sight, however, was visible; and the two, as they stared into the fog, saw nothing whatever. Nor did any of the others on board seem to have heard the voice. The priest was still intent on his Breviary. Terry was still whistling his abominable tune. Jericho was below with his pots and pans; and Biler, taking advantage of his absence, was seated on the taffrail devouring a raw turnip, which he chewed with a melancholy air. To none of these had the voice been audible, and therefore Claude and Zac alone were confronted with this mystery of the deep. But it was a mystery which they could not fathom; for the fog was all around, hiding everything from view, and the more they peered into the gloom the less were they able to understand it.

Neither of them spoke for some time. Zac had not understood the words, but was more puzzled about the fact of a speaker being so near on the water, behind the fog, than he was about the meaning of the words which had been spoken. That seemed to be quite a secondary consideration. And it was not until he had exhausted his resources in trying to imagine what or where the one might be, that, he thought of asking about the other.

"What did it mean?" he asked, at length.

Claude told him.

Zac said nothing for some time.

"I wonder whether they've seen us," said he, at length. "No—'tain't possible. The fog's too thick—and we're as invisible to them as they are to us. Besides, these words show that they ain't thinkin' about anybody but themselves. Well, all we've got to do is to keep as still as a mouse, an' I'll jest go an' warn the boys."

With these words Zac moved softly away to warn his crew. First he went to Terry, and informed him that the whole fleet of France was around the Parson, and that their only chance of safety was to keep silent—a piece of information which effectually stopped Terry's singing and whistling for some time; then he told Biler, in a friendly way, that if he spoke above a whisper, or made any noise, he'd pitch him overboard with an anchor tied to his neck. Then he warned Jericho. As for Père Michel, he felt that warning was unnecessary, for the priest was too absorbed in his book to be conscious of the external world. After this, he came back to Claude, who had been listening ever since he left, but without hearing anything more.

"We must have drifted nearer together," said Zac. "The voice was a good deal louder than when I fust heerd it. My only hope is, that they'll drift past us, an' we'll git further away from them. But I wonder what they meant by bringin' her head around. P'aps they've seen us, after all—an' then, again, p'aps they haven't."

He said this in a whisper, and Clause answered in another whisper.

"It seems to me," said Claude, "that if they'd seen us, they'd have said something more—or at any rate, they'd have made more noise. But as it is, they've been perfectly silent."

"Wal—I on'y hope we won't hear anythin' more of them."

For more than two hours silence was observed on board the Parson. Terry stopped all whistling, and occupied himself with scratching his bullet head. The priest sat motionless, reading his book. Jericho drew the unhappy Biler down below for safe keeping, and detained him there a melancholy prisoner. Claude and Zac stood listening, but nothing more was heard.

To Claude there seemed something weird and ghostly in this incident—a voice thus sounding suddenly forth out of nothingness, and then dying away into the silence from which it had emerged: there was that in it which made him feel a sensation of involuntary awe; and the longer the silence continued, the more did