here by a patch of white mist. The ferryman is asleep, and his door is
shut. We call him by all the names known among men. We pound upon his
house, but he makes no sign. Before he awakes and comes out, growling,
the sky in the east is lightened a shade, and the star of the dawn
sparkles less brilliantly. But the process is slow. The twilight is
long. There is a surprising deliberation about the preparation of the
sun for rising, as there is in the movements of the boatman. Both appear
to be reluctant to begin the day.

The ferryman and his shaggy comrade get ready at last, and we step into
the clumsy yawl, and the slowly moving oars begin to pull us upstream.
The strait is here less than a mile wide; the tide is running strongly,
and the water is full of swirls,--the little whirlpools of the rip-tide.
The morning-star is now high in the sky; the moon, declining in the
west, is more than ever like a silver shield; along the east is a faint
flush of pink. In the increasing light we can see the bold shores of the
strait, and the square projection of Cape Porcupine below.

On the rocks above the town of Plaster Cove, where there is a black
and white sign,--Telegraph Cable,--we set ashore our companions of
the night, and see them climb up to their station for retailing the
necessary means of intoxication in their district, with the mournful
thought that we may never behold them again.

As we drop down along the shore, there is a white sea-gull asleep on
the rock, rolled up in a ball, with his head under his wing. The rock
is dripping with dew, and the bird is as wet as his hard bed. We pass
within an oar's length of him, but he does not heed us, and we do not
disturb his morning slumbers. For there is no such cruelty as the waking
of anybody out of a morning nap.

When we land, and take up our bags to ascend the hill to the white
tavern of Port Hastings (as Plaster Cove now likes to be called), the
sun lifts himself slowly over the treetops, and the magic of the night
vanishes.

And this is Cape Breton, reached after almost a week of travel. Here is
the Gut of Canso, but where is Baddeck? It is Saturday morning; if we
cannot make Baddeck by night, we might as well have remained in
Boston. And who knows what we shall find if we get there? A forlorn
fishing-station, a dreary hotel? Suppose we cannot get on, and are
forced to stay here? Asking ourselves these questions, we enter the
Plaster Cove tavern. No one is stirring,