erally depend
on our heels. There was but a moment in which to decide; in another
minute, the ship would be past the opening, which could only be regained
by tacking, if it could be regained at all. I gave the order to luff.

Our three Frenchmen, fancying themselves now certainly bound to _la belle_
France, were as active as cats. Neb and Diogenes throwing their powerful
force on the braces with a good-will, too, we soon had the Dawn braced
sharp up, heading well to windward of the passage. Monsieur Le Gros was
delighted. Apparently, he thought all was right, again; and he led the
way, flourishing both hands, while all in the boat, fishermen inclusive,
were bawling, and shouting, and gesticulating, in a way that would
certainly have confused us, had I cared a straw about them. I thought it
well enough to follow the boat; but, as for their cries, they were
disregarded. Had Monsieur Le Gros seen fit to wait for the ship in the
narrowest part of the inlet, he might have embarrassed us; but, so far
from this, he appeared to be entirely carried away by the excitement of
the chase, and was as eager to push ahead, as a boy who was struggling to
be first in at the goal.

It was a nervous instant when the Dawn's bow first entered the narrow
passage. The width, from rock to rock, speaking only of visible things,
might have been thirty fathoms; and this strait narrowed, rather than
widened, for several hundred feet, until it was reduced fully one-third.
The tide ran like a mill-tail, and it was, perhaps, lucky for us that
there was no time for reflection or irresolution; the aspect of things
being so serious as might well have thrown the most decided man into
uncertainty and doubt. The current sucked the vessel in, like the
Maelstrom, and we were whirling ahead at a rate that would have split the
ship from her keel to her top-timbers, had we come upon a sunken rock. The
chances were about even; for I regarded the pilotage as a very random sort
of an affair. We glanced on in breathless expectation, therefore; not
knowing but each instant would involve us in ruin.

This jeopardy endured about five minutes. At the end of that brief space,
the ship had run the gauntlet for the distance of a mile, driven onward by
the current rather than by the wind. So tremendous was our velocity in the
narrowest part, that I actually caught myself grasping the rail of the
ship, as we glanced past the rocks, as if to keep myself from a fall. The
Fre