sir," as they went to the sheets, braces and bowlines. To them the
passage of no Hell-Gate conveyed the idea of any particular terror,
and with the one they were about to enter, they were much too
familiar to care anything about it.

The brig was now floating fast, with the tide, up abreast of the
east end of Blackwell's, and in two or three more minutes she would
be fairly in the Gate. Spike was aft, where he could command a view
of everything forward, and Mulford stood on the quarter-deck, to
look after the head-braces. An old and trustworthy seaman, who acted
as a sort of boatswain, had the charge on the forecastle, and was to
tend the sheets and tack. His name was Rove.

"See all clear," called out Spike. "D'ye hear there, for'ard! I
shall make a half-board in the Gate, if the wind favour us, and the
tide prove strong enough to hawse us to wind'ard sufficiently to
clear the Pot--so mind your--"

The captain breaking off in the middle of this harangue, Mulford
turned his head, in order to see what might be the matter. There was
Spike, levelling a spy-glass at a boat that was pulling swiftly out
of the north channel, and shooting like an arrow directly athwart
the brig's bows into the main passage of the Gate. He stepped to the
captain's elbow.

"Just take a look at them chaps, Mr. Mulford," said Spike, handing
his mate the glass.

"They seem in a hurry," answered Harry, as he adjusted the glass to
his eye, "and will go through the Gate in less time than it will