stically observed--

"Choose your object, Sir; in such a party, a man of sentiment may have a
preference."

The young man colored, as much with shame at, the degrading duty he had
been commissioned to perform, as with vexation at his failure. Recovering
his self-composure, however, he lifted his hat to la belle Barberie, and
the periagua dashed on, in triumph. Still the leading cutter was near the
shore, where it soon arrived, the crew lying on their oars at the end of
the wharf, in evident expectation of the arrival of the ferry-boat. At
this sight, the schipper shook his head, and looked up in the bold face of
his passenger, in a manner to betray how much his mind misgave the result.
But the tail mariner maintained his coolness, and began to make merry
allusions to the service which he had braved with so much temerity, and
from which no one believed he was yet likely to escape. By the former
manoeuvres, the periagua had gained a position well to windward of the
wharf; and she was now steered close upon the wind, directly for the
shore. Against the consequences of a perseverance in this course, however,
the schipper saw fit to remonstrate.

"Shipwrecks and rocky bottoms!" exclaimed the alarmed waterman. "A Holland
galliot would go to pieces, if you should run her in among those
stepping-stones, with this breeze! No honest boatman loves to see a man
stowed in a cruiser's hold, like a thief caged in his prison; but when it
comes to breaking the nose of the Milk-Maid, it is asking too much of her
owner, to stand by and look on."

"There shall not be a dimple of her lovely countenance deranged," answered
his cool passenger. "Now, lower away your sails, and we'll run along the
shore, down to yon wharf. 'Twould be an ungallant act to treat the
dairy-girl with so little ceremony, gentlemen, after the lively foot and
quick evolutions she has shown in our behalf. The best dancer in the
island could not have better played her part, though jigging under the
music of a three-stringed fiddle!"

By this time the sails were lowered, and the periagua was gliding down
towards the place of landing, running always at the distance of some fifty
feet from the shore.

"Every craft has its allotted time, like a mortal," continued the
inexplicable mariner of the India-shawl. "If she is to die a sudden death,
there is your beam-end and stern-way, which takes her into the grave
without funeral service, or parish prayers; your dropsy is be