for if you don't start with
good look before you, faix maybe it's never at all to the end o' your
trip you'll come."

"Well, there's no use in talkin' aboot it now, anyhow; but when do you
expec' to be there?"

"Why, you see we must wait antil I can tell how the wind is like to
hould on, before I can make up my mind to that."

"But you're sure now, Barny, that you're up to the coorse you have to
run?"

"See now, lave me alone and don't be cross crass-questionin'
me--tare-an-ouns, do you think me sich a bladdherang as for to go to
shuperinscribe a thing I wasn't aiquil to?"

"No; I was only goin' to ax you what coorse you wor goin' to steer?"

"You'll find out soon enough when we get there--and so I bid you agin
lay me alone,--just keep your toe in your pump. Shure I'm here at the
helm, and a weight on my mind, and it's fitther for you, Jim, to mind
your own business and lay me to mind mine; away wid you there and be
handy, haul taut that foresheet there, we must run close on the wind; be
handy, boys; make everything dhraw."

These orders were obeyed, and the hooker soon passed to windward of a
ship that left the harbor before her, but could not hold on a wind with
the same tenacity as the hooker, whose qualities in this particular
render it peculiarly suitable for the purposes to which it is applied,
namely, pilot and fishing boats.

We have said a ship left the harbor before the hooker had set sail; and
it is now fitting to inform the reader that Barny had contrived, in the
course of his last meeting with the "long sailor," to ascertain that
this ship, then lying in the harbor, was going to the very place Barny
wanted to reach. Barny's plan of action was decided upon in a moment; he
had now nothing to do but to watch the sailing of the ship and follow in
her course. Here was, at once, a new mode of navigation discovered.

The stars, twinkling in mysterious brightness through the silent gloom
of night, were the first encouraging, because visible, guides to the
adventurous mariners of antiquity. Since then, the sailor, encouraged by
a bolder science, relies on the unseen agency of nature, depending on
the fidelity of an atom of iron to the mystic law that claims its homage
in the north. This is one refinement of science upon another. But the
beautiful simplicity of Barny O'Reirdon's philosophy cannot be too much
admired,--to follow the ship that is going to the same place. Is not
this navigation made easy?