amidship, where the little miniature
salt we have described before lay, with his face downward, upon the
main-hatch, and ordering him to bring the lead-line, he went to leeward
and took a cast; and after paying out about twenty-five fathoms without
sounding, hauled aboard again. The wind was southward and light. As soon
as he had examined the lead he walked aft and ordered the sheets eased
and the vessel headed two points farther off. This done, he went below,
and shaking his barometer several times, found it had begun to fall very
fast. Taking down his coast-chart, he consulted it very studiously for
nearly half an hour, laying off an angle with a pair of dividers and
scale, with mathematical minuteness; after which he pricked his course
along the surface to a given point. This was intended as his course.

"Where do you make her, Captain?" said the mate, as he lay in his berth.

"We must be off the Capes--we must keep a sharp look out for them
reefs. They are so deceptive that we'll be on to them before we know it.
There's no telling by sounding. We may get forty fathoms one minute and
strike the next. I've heard old West-India coasters say the white water
was the best warning," replied the Captain.

"I'm mighty afraid of that Carysfort reef, since I struck upon it in
1845. I was in a British schooner then, bound from Kingston, Jamaica, to
New York. We kept a bright lookout, all the way through the passage, and
yet struck, one morning just about day-light; and, five minutes before,
we had sounded without getting bottom. When it cleared away, that we
could see, there was two others like ourselves. One was the ship John
Parker, of Boston, and the other was a 'long-shoreman. We had a valuable
cargo on board, but the craft wasn't hurt a bit; and if the skipper--who
was a little colonial man, not much acquainted with the judicial value
of a wrecker's services--had a' taken my advice, he wouldn't got into
the snarl he did at Key West, where they carried him, and charged
him thirty-six hundred dollars for the job. Yes, and a nice little
commission to the British consul for counting the doubloons, which,
by-the-by, Skipper, belonged to that great house of Howland &
Aspinwalls. They were right clever fellows, and it went into the
general average account for the relief of the underwriters' big chest,"
continued the mate.

"We must have all hands ready at the call," said the Captain. "It looks
dirty overhead, and I think we're