hes of yellow sand. Very beautiful was this natural
aquarium; but time was flying, and "The Shoals" were more than thirty
miles distant. The mist began to drive in long rifts, and a gleam of
sunshine came out, but only for a moment. I took advantage of it at
once, and pushed out from port.

The opposite shore of the cove, in the mouth of which the island lies,
was dimly discernible, and the dense foliage of the willows surrounding
the fishermen's houses loomed up in the distance, while at the extreme
end of the Point the sea broke heavily on the long protruding reef which
slanted eastward. I made rapidly for the Point, and reached the outside
line of rollers just in time; for the fog, which had been drifting
backwards and forwards and torn in long rents, now closed over again,
shutting down darker than ever. It was with the utmost difficulty that
I could make out the faint gray line of cliff and surf. On the whole,
however, it appeared best to keep on and feel my way along the coast,
navigating rather by sound than by sight. The shore grows higher as you
go northward towards Gloucester harbor, and is, if possible, more rugged
and broken than to the south. The chief danger was from sunken rocks,
which every wave submerged three or four feet, and which in the hollow
of the sea were wholly above water. I came upon one very suddenly, as
the wave was swelling above it, and the rock-weed afloat on its sunken
head looked, for the instant, like the hair of a drowning person. My
boat went directly over it, and the next moment its black crest rose in
the trough of the wave. One such chance of wreck was enough, and so I
kept farther out, losing sight almost entirely of the cliffs. The sun,
meanwhile, was pouring down an intense heat, making the fog luminous,
but not rendering the coast any more visible. I knew that before me,
somewhere, lay the reef of Norman's Woe. The huge rock on the inside of
the reef, separated from the shore by a narrow strait, I judged must be
right ahead, but not knowing how near, I kept on, cautiously looking
behind, every few strokes, and began to think I must have passed it in
the fog, when suddenly, as if it had stepped in the way, it rose before
me, its top lost in the mist, and with the sullen drip and splash of the
sea on its almost perpendicular sides. I had to back water with some
force, and, skirting the reef, stood on till fairly outside,--when,
turning shoreward again, I went on to the edge of t