have followed the track of the Gulf
Stream."

"Yes, indeed; sir," replied Curtis, "that is the usual course; but you
see that this time the captain hasn't chosen to take it."

"But why not?" I persisted.

"That's not for me to say, sir; he ordered us eastwards, and eastwards
we go."

"Haven't you called his attention to it?" I inquired.

Curtis acknowledged that he had already pointed out what an unusual
route they were taking, but that the captain had said that he was quite
aware what he was about. The mate made no further remark; but the knit
of his brow, as he passed his hand mechanically across his forehead,
made me fancy that he was inclined to speak out more strongly.

"All very well, Curtis," I said, "but I don't know what to think about
trying new routes. Here we are at the 7th of October, and if we are to
reach Europe before the bad weather sets in, I should suppose there is
not a day to be lost."

"Right, sir, quite right; there is not a day to be lost."

Struck by his manner, I ventured to add, "Do you mind, Mr. Curtis giving
me your honest opinion of Captain Huntly?"

He hesitated a moment, and then replied shortly, "He is my captain,
sir."

This evasive answer of course put an end to any further interrogation on
my part, but it only set me thinking the more.

Curtis was not mistaken. At about three o'clock the lookout man sung out
that there was land to windward, and descried what seemed as if it might
be a line of smoke in the north-east horizon. At six, I went on deck
with M. Letourneur and his son, and we could then distinctly make out
the low group of the Bermudas, encircled by their formidable chain of
breakers.

"There," said Andre Letourneur to me, as we stood gazing at the distant
land, "there lies the enchanted Archipelago, sung by your poet Moore.
The exile Waller, too, as long ago as 1643, wrote an enthusiastic
panegyric on the islands, and I have been told that at one time English
ladies would wear no other bonnets than such as were made of the leaves
of the Bermuda palm."

"Yes," I replied, "the Bermudas were all the rage in the seventeenth
century, although latterly they have fallen into comparative oblivion."

"But let me tell you, M. Andre," interposed Curtis, who had as usual
joined our party, "that although poets may rave, and be as enthusiastic
as they like about these islands, sailors will tell a different tale.
The hidden reefs that lie in a semicircle about two or thr