h an intelligent regard to the
particular service in which she was about to be employed, and both were
handled by men who knew perfectly well how to take care of craft of that
description.

The wind gradually increased in strength, and sail was shortened in the
schooners, until each was finally brought down to a close-reefed foresail.
This would have been heaving the vessels to, had they not been kept a
little off, in order to force them through the water. To lie-to, in
perfection, some after-sail might have been required; but neither master
saw a necessity, as yet, of remaining stationary. It was thought better to
wade along some two knots, than to be pitching and lurching with nothing
but a drift, or leeward set. In this, both masters were probably right,
and found their vessels farther to windward in the end, than if they had
endeavoured to hold their own, by lying-to. The great difficulty they had
to contend with in keeping a little off, was the danger of seas coming on
board; but, as yet, the ocean was not sufficiently aroused to make this
very hazardous, and both schooners, having no real cargoes, were light and
buoyant, and floated dry. Had they encountered the sea there was, with
full freights in their holds, it might have been imprudent to expose them
even to this remote chance of having their decks swept. Water comes aboard
of small vessels, almost without an exception, in head winds and seas;
though the contrivances of modern naval architecture have provided
defences that make merchant vessels, now, infinitely more comfortable, in
this respect, than they were at the period of which we are writing.

At the end of three days, Roswell Gardiner supposed himself to be about
the latitude of Cape Henry, and some thirty or forty leagues from the
land. It was much easier to compute the last, than the first of these
material facts. Of course, he had no observations. The sun had not been
visible since the storm commenced, and nearly half the time, during the
last day, the two vessels were shut in from one another, by mists and a
small rain. It blew more in squalls than it had done, and the relative
positions of the schooners were more or less affected by the circumstance.
Sometimes, one would be to windward, and ahead; then, the other would
obtain a similar advantage. Once or twice they seemed about to separate,
the distance between them getting to be so considerable, as, apparently,
to render it impossible to keep in c