erpool.'

"'What!' says the captain,--have I come all the way up Channel without
knowing it? I've been on the look-out for Cape Clear ever since
daybreak, and here, by ginger, I've overrun my reckoning _three hundred
miles_.'"

"Well," said old Roberts, "one of my captains, Brandegee, you know, who
had the 'China,' got caught, one November, just as he was coming on the
coast, in a gale from the eastward. He knew he was somewhere near
Provincetown, but how near he couldn't say. It was snowing, and blowing,
and ice-making all over the decks and rigging, and an awful night
generally. He did not dare to run before it, because it was blowing at a
rate to take him halfway in Worcester County in the next twenty-four
hours. He couldn't stand to the south'ard, because that would put the
back of Cape Cod under his lee. He was afraid to stand to the north'ard,
not knowing precisely where the coast of Maine might be. So he hove the
ship to, under as little sail as he could, and let her drift. I've heard
him say, he heard the breakers a hundred times that night," ('I'll bet
he did,' ejaculated the captain.) "and it seemed like three nights in
one before morning came. When it did come, wind and sea appeared to have
gone down. The lookouts were half dead with cold and sleep and all; but
they made out to hail land on the weather bow.

"'Good George!' said old Brandegee, 'how did land get on the _weather_
bow? We must have got inside of Cape Cod, and that must be Sharkpainter
Hill.'

"'Land on the lee quarter,' hailed the watch, again: and in a minute
more, 'Land on the lee beam,--land on the lee bow.'

"Brandegee sung out to heave the lead and let go both anchors, and he
said that, but for the gale having gone down so, he should have expected
to strike the next minute. Just as the anchors came home and the ship
headed to the wind, the second mate came aft, rubbing his eyes and
looking very queer.

"'Captain Brandegee,' says he, 'if I was in Boston Harbor, I should say
that there was Nix's Mate.'

"'Well, Mr. Jones,' says the old man, dropping out the words very
slowly, 'if--that's--Nix's Mate,--Rainsford Island--ought--to--be--here
away, and--as--I'm--a--living--man, THERE IT IS!'

"Half-frozen as they were, there was a cheer rung out from that crew
that waked half the North-End out of their morning nap.

"'Just my plaguy luck!' said the old fellow to me, as he told it. 'If
I'd held on to my anchors another half-hour, I migh