When I slept I dreamed that I was alone.

This feeling never left me; but, sleeping or waking, I seemed always to know the position of the sloop, and I saw my vessel moving across the chart, which became a picture before me.
One night while I sat in the cabin under this spell, the profound stillness all about was broken by human voices alongside! I sprang instantly to the deck, startled beyond my power to tell.

Passing close under lee, like an apparition, was a white bark under full sail.

The sailors on board of her were hauling on ropes to brace the yards, which just cleared the sloop's mast as she swept by.

No one hailed from the white-winged flier, but I heard some one on board say that he saw lights on the sloop, and that he made her out to be a fisherman.