ies directly before the navigator, while, like the flattering
prospects of life, numberless hidden obstacles are in wait to arrest the
unheeding and ignorant.

The 'Skimmer of the Seas' was deeply practised in all the intricacies and
dangers of the shoals and rocks. Most of his life had been passed in
threading the one, or in avoiding the other. So keen and quick had his eye
become, in detecting the presence of any of those signs which forewarn the
mariner of danger, that a ripple on the surface, or a deeper shade in the
color of the water, rarely escaped his vigilance. Seated on the
top-sail-yard of his brigantine, he had overlooked the passage from the
moment they were through the Gate, and issued his mandates to those below
with a precision and promptitude that were not surpassed by the trained
conductor of the Coquette himself. But when his sight embraced the wide
reach of water that lay in front, as his little vessel swept round the
head-land of Throgmorton, he believed there no longer existed a reason for
so much care. Still there was a motive for hesitation. A heavily-moulded
and dull-sailing coaster was going eastward not a league ahead of the
brigantine, while one of the light sloops of those waters was coming
westward still further in the distance. Notwithstanding the wind was
favorable to each alike, both vessels had deviated from the direct line,
and were steering towards a common centre, near an island that was placed
more than a mile to the northward of the straight course. A mariner, like
him of the India-shawl, could not overlook so obvious an intimation of a
change in the channel. The Water-Witch was kept away, and her lighter
sails were lowered, in order to allow the royal cruiser, whose lofty
canvas was plainly visible above the land, to draw near. When the
Coquette was seen also to diverge, there no longer remained a doubt of the
direction necessary to be taken; and every thing was quickly set upon the
brigantine, even to her studding-sails. Long ere she reached the island,
the two coasters had met, and each again changed its course, reversing
that on which the other had just been sailing. There was, in these
movements, as plain an explanation as a seaman could desire, that the
pursued were right On reaching the island, therefore, they again luffed
into the wake of the schooner; and having nearly crossed the sheet of
water, they passed the coaster, receiving an assurance, in words, that all
was now pl