y landing which they could reach?" Harry asked.

There was none,--but the light-ship lay right in their track, and if
they had good luck, they might get aboard of her.

"The boatman?" said Philip, anxiously,--"Mr. Lambert's boatman; is he a
good sailor?"

"Don't know," was the reply. "Stranger here. Dutchman, Frenchman,
Portegee, or some kind of a foreigner."

"Seems to understand himself in a boat," said another.

"Mr. Malbone knows him," said a third. "The same that dove with the
young woman under the steamboat paddles."

"Good grit," said the first.

"That's so," was the answer. "But grit don't teach a man the channel."

All agreed to this axiom; but as there was so strong a probability that
the voyagers had reached the light-ship, there seemed less cause for
fear.

The next question was, whether it was possible to follow them. All
agreed that it would be foolish for any boat to attempt it, till the
wind had blown itself out, which might be within half an hour. After
that, some predicted a calm, some a fog, some a renewal of the storm;
there was the usual variety of opinions. At any rate, there might
perhaps be an interval during which they could go out, if the gentlemen
did not mind a wet jacket.

Within the half-hour came indeed an interval of calm, and a light shone
behind the clouds from the west. It faded soon into a gray fog, with
puffs of wind from the southwest again. When the young men went out with
the boatmen, the water had grown more quiet, save where angry little
gusts ruffled it. But these gusts made it necessary to carry a double
reef, and they made but little progress against wind and tide.

A dark-gray fog, broken by frequent wind-flaws, makes the ugliest of all
days on the water. A still, pale fog is soothing; it lulls nature to
a kind of repose. But a windy fog with occasional sunbeams and sudden
films of metallic blue breaking the leaden water,--this carries an
impression of something weird and treacherous in the universe, and
suggests caution.

As the boat floated on, every sight and sound appeared strange. The
music from the fort came sudden and startling through the vaporous
eddies. A tall white schooner rose instantaneously near them, like
a light-house. They could see the steam of the factory floating low,
seeking some outlet between cloud and water. As they drifted past a
wharf, the great black piles of coal hung high and gloomy; then a stray
sunbeam brought out their peacock