In this slight glance at the Griffins, we have seen where the hard streak came from. That old grandfather’s was gradually diluted as it mingled with other and more kindly blood, till in Walter rudeness had become attempered to firmness, and nothing more.
CHAPTER XI.
RECONNOITRING.
IT was an overcast night; there was no moon; the stars were bright overhead, but around the edge of the horizon they were obscured by thin clouds, through which a star occasionally shone.
The brigantine, with all sail set, was running in for the land, the dark outline of which could be dimly seen in the distance. The French had put out the light on Planier Island, and removed all the buoys from the shoals and reefs, that they might not be of advantage to the enemy; but the lights of the English frigate could be seen far ahead, as she also stood in for the land, her commander not dreaming he was followed by the vessel, so nearly his prize, and which he supposed effectually frightened from that locality.
“It would have been a very valuable prize to us, could we have taken her,” said the captain of the frigate to his lieutenant; (”and at one time I thought she was ours,) not merely as far as the value of her cargo was concerned; but we could have put a few guns aboard of her, and a crew, and she is so fast she would have taken everything on the coast; our prize-money would soon have amounted to something very handsome.”
“Where did the Yankees learn to build such vessels? Before the war they couldn’t make their own mouse-traps.”