in my sea-anchor, and setting
what canvas the sloop could carry, headed her away for Monhegan light,
which she made before daylight on the morning of the 8th. The wind
being free, I ran on into Round Pond harbor, which is a little port
east from Pemaquid. Here I rested a day, while the wind rattled among
the pine-trees on shore. But the following day was fine enough, and I
put to sea, first writing up my log from Cape Ann, not omitting a full
account of my adventure with the whale.

[Illustration: "'No dorg nor no cat.'"]

The _Spray_, heading east, stretched along the coast among many
islands and over a tranquil sea. At evening of this day, May 10, she
came up with a considerable island, which I shall always think of as
the Island of Frogs, for the _Spray_ was charmed by a million voices.
From the Island of Frogs we made for the Island of Birds, called
Gannet Island, and sometimes Gannet Rock, whereon is a bright,
intermittent light, which flashed fitfully across the _Spray's_ deck
as she coasted along under its light and shade. Thence shaping a
course for Briar's Island, I came among vessels the following
afternoon on the western fishing-grounds, and after speaking a
fisherman at anchor, who gave me a wrong course, the _Spray_ sailed
directly over the southwest ledge through the worst tide-race in the
Bay of Fundy, and got into Westport harbor in Nova Scotia, where I had
spent eight years of my life as a lad.

The fisherman may have said "east-southeast," the course I was
steering when I hailed him; but I thought he said "east-northeast,"
and I accordingly changed it to that. Before he made up his mind to
answer me at all, he improved the occasion of his own curiosity to
know where I was from, and if I was alone, and if I didn't have "no
dorg nor no cat." It was the first time in all my life at sea that I
had heard a hail for information answered by a question. I think the
chap belonged to the Foreign Islands. There was one thing I was sure
of, and that was that he did not belong to Briar's Island, because he
dodged a sea that slopped over the rail, and stopping to brush the
water from his face, lost a fine cod which he was about to ship. My
islander would not have done that. It is known that a Briar Islander,
fish or no fish on his hook, never flinches from a sea. He just tends
to his lines and hauls or "saws." Nay, have I not seen my old friend
Deacon W. D---, a good man of the island, while listening to a sermo