“Yes,” continued Agnes, “and the ocean is so still and quiet: who could ever imagine that it contained so many terrible monsters.”
“True;” remarked the priest, “surfaces, my child, are, alas! too frequently deceptive. For instance, take the appearance of the ocean this beautiful and blessed morning; it looks as pure and unspotted as when the sun first dawned upon it on the fourth day of creation; still, how many murderous deeds have there not been done upon it since that time, and over how many wrecks of human fabrics has it not rolled? If we could penetrate its depth, and see its bed, we should probably behold the skeletons of the fierce Caraibs that first inhabited this part of the world, and their rude instruments of war, blended confusedly together with the bones and elaborate weapons of their more polished conquerors; while the large fishes that still hold possession of their medium of existence, now peer with meaningless eyes into the naked skulls, or rummage for their food the rotting wrecks of the bristling war-vessels that once rode these seas.”
Agnes felt thankful for this long and solemn observation, which gave her time to think on one of the vessels that had not as yet become a wreck beneath the ocean.
After a pause, the priest continued:
“This basin over which we are now sailing, my dear Agnes, may have once been high and dry land, and the islands which are scattered about in this horse-shoe fashion, may have been—.”
“Stop, sare,” interrupted the master fisherman, who the reader may recollect was constituted the captain and proprietor of the cutter when it was dispatched from the schooner, and who was now sitting between Agnes and the priest, steering the boat, “stop, sare,” he said, endeavouring to make himself understood in English, “me wees hear something they say there,” and he made an almost imperceptible sign towards the bows of the cutter, where the sailors of the captured ship were sitting together, and speaking among themselves in a sort of half whisper. The master fisherman’s attention had been attracted towards them by a few words which he had overheard, and being suspicious lest they should presume upon their numerical strength, and make an attempt to take possession of the cutter, he was anxious to make himself acquainted with their plans in order to anticipate them.
“We will never get ashore at this rate, Bill,” said one sailor to another.
“I’ll be d—n—d, if we will,” answered the other, “what the devil does that d—n—d jack Spaniole know about steering a boat.”