ompany; then the craft would change
places, by a slow process, passing quite near to each other again. No one
could tell, at the moment, precisely why these variations occurred; though
the reasons, generally, were well understood by all on board them.
Squalls, careless steering, currents, eddies, and all the accidents of the
ocean, contribute to create these vacillating movements, which will often
cause two vessels of equal speed, and under the same canvass, to seem to
be of very different qualities. In the nights, the changes were greatest,
often placing the schooners leagues asunder, and seemingly separating them
altogether. But, Roswell Gardiner became satisfied that Captain Daggett
stuck by him intentionally; for on all such occasions if _his_ schooner
happened to be out of the way, he managed to close again, ere the danger
of separating became too great to be overcome.

Our mariners judged of their distance from the land, by means of the lead.
If the American coast is wanting in the sublime and picturesque, and every
traveller must admit its defects in both, it has the essential advantage
of graduated soundings. So regular is the shoaling of the water, and so
studiously have the fathoms been laid down, that a cautious navigator can
always feel his way in to the coast, and never need place his vessel on
the beach, as is so often done, without at least knowing that he was about
to do so. Men become adventurous by often-repeated success; and the
struggles of competition, the go-ahead-ism of the national character, and
the trouble it gives to sound in deep water, all contribute to cast away
the reckless and dashing navigator, on this as well as on other coasts,
and this to his own great surprise; but, whenever such a thing _does_
happen, unless in cases of stress of weather, the reader may rest assured
it is because those who have had charge of the stranded vessel have
neglected to sound. The mile-stones on a highway do not more accurately
note the distances, than does the lead on nearly the whole of the American
coast. Thus Roswell Gardiner judged himself to be about thirty-two or
three marine leagues from the land, on the evening of the third day of
that gale of wind. He placed the schooner in the latitude of Cape Henry on
less certain data, though that was the latitude in which he supposed her
to be, by dead reckoning.

"I wish I knew where Daggett makes himself out," said the young master,
just as the day closed on