o understand that
it is better in a commander to go wrong than to go nowhere. At all
events, the Lord High Admiral couldn't command a yawl with dignity, if
he consulted the cockswain every time he wished to go ashore. No sir, if
I sink, I sink! but, d---me, I'll go down ship-shape and with dignity."

"But, brother Cap, I have no wish to go down anywhere, unless it be to
the station among the Thousand Islands whither we are bound."

"Well, well, Sergeant, rather than ask advice--that is, direct,
barefaced advice--of a foremast hand, or any other than a quarter-deck
officer, I would go round to the whole thousand, and examine them one by
one until we got the right haven. But there is such a thing as coming at
an opinion without manifesting ignorance, and I will manage to rouse all
there is out of these hands, and make them think all the while that I
am cramming them with my own experience! We are sometimes obliged to use
the glass at sea when there is nothing in sight, or to heave the lead
long before we strike soundings. When a youngster, sailed two v'y'ges
with a man who navigated his ship pretty much by the latter sort of
information, which sometimes answers."

"I know we are steering in the right direction at present," returned
the Sergeant; "but in the course of a few hours we shall be up with a
headland, where we must feel our way with more caution."

"Leave me to pump the man at the wheel, brother, and you shall see that
I will make him suck in a very few minutes."

Cap and the Sergeant now walked aft, until they stood by the sailor who
was at the helm, Cap maintaining an air of security and tranquillity,
like one who was entirely confident of his own powers.

"This is a wholesome air, my lad," Cap observed, in the manner that a
superior on board a vessel sometimes condescends to use to a favored
inferior. "Of course you have it in this fashion off the land every
night?"

"At this season of the year, sir," the man returned, touching his hat,
out of respect, to his new commander and Sergeant Dunham's connection.

"The same thing, I take it, among the Thousand Islands? The wind will
stand, of course, though we shall then have land on every side of us."

"When we get farther east, sir, the wind will probably shift, for there
can then be no particular land-breeze."

"Ay, ay; so much for your fresh water! It has always some trick that is
opposed to nature. Now, down among the West India Islands, one is just
a