watching the sudden change that was going on overhead; and, without
speaking to any one, rose, took a glance at the compass, and then
went forward to the lookout, charging him to keep a sharp watch, as
they were not only in a dangerous channel, but in the track of
vessels bound into and out of the gulf. After this, he returned
amidship, where the little miniature salt we have described before
lay, with his face downward, upon the main-hatch, and ordering him
to bring the lead-line, he went to leeward and took a cast; and
after paying out about twenty-five fathoms without sounding, hauled
aboard again. The wind was southward and light. As soon as he had
examined the lead he walked aft and ordered the sheets eased and the
vessel headed two points farther off. This done, he went below, and
shaking his barometer several times, found it had begun to fall very
fast. Taking down his coast-chart, he consulted it very studiously
for nearly half an hour, laying off an angle with a pair of dividers
and scale, with mathematical minuteness; after which he pricked his
course along the surface to a given point. This was intended as his
course.

"Where do you make her, Captain?" said the mate, as he lay in his
berth.

"We must be off the Capes--we must keep a sharp look out for them
reefs. They are so deceptive that we'll be on to them before we know
it. There's no telling by sounding. We may get forty fathoms one
minute and strike the next. I've heard old West-India coasters say
the white water was the best warning," replied the Captain.

"I'm mighty afraid of that Carysfort reef, since I struck upon it in
1845. I was in a British schooner then, bound from Kingston,