mostly in the coast trade, d'ye see, but over the water as well, as far
as those navigation laws would let me. Except the two years that I came
ashore for the King Philip business, when every man that could carry a
gun was needed on the border, I've never been three casts of a biscuit
from salt water, and I tell you that I never knew a better crossing than
the one we have just made."

"Ay, we have come along like a buck before a forest fire. But it is
strange to me how you find your way so clearly out here with never track
nor trail to guide you. It would puzzle me, Ephraim, to find America,
to say nought of the Narrows of New York."

"I am somewhat too far to the north, Amos. We have been on or about the
fiftieth since we sighted Cape La Hague. To-morrow we should make land,
by my reckonin'."

"Ah, to-morrow! And what will it be? Mount Desert? Cape Cod?
Long Island?"

"Nay, lad, we are in the latitude of the St. Lawrence, and are more like
to see the Arcadia coast. Then with this wind a day should carry us
south, or two at the most. A few more such voyages and I shall buy
myself a fair brick house in Green Lane of North Boston, where I can
look down on the bay, or on the Charles or the Mystic, and see the ships
comin' and goin'. So I would end my life in peace and quiet."

All day Amos Green, in spite of his friend's assurance, strained his
eyes in the fruitless search for land, and when at last the darkness
fell he went below and laid out his fringed hunting tunic, his leather
gaiters, and his raccoon-skin cap, which were very much more to his