The ship went, rising and falling on the swells of the ocean, that now began to make themselves felt, past the light and the low point of the Hook within a few minutes after we had squared away, and, once more, the open ocean lay before us.  I could not avoid smiling at Neb, just as we opened the broad waste of waters, and got an unbroken view of the rolling ocean to the southward.  The fellow was on the main-top-sail yard, having just run out, and lashed the heel of a top-gallant-studding-sail boom, in order to set the sail.  Before he lay in to the mast, he raised his Herculean frame, and took a look to windward.  His eyes opened, his nostrils dilated, and I fancied he resembled a hound that scented game in the gale, as he snuffed the sea-air which came fanning his glistening face, filled with the salts and peculiar flavours of the ocean.  I question if Neb thought at all of Chloe, for the next hour or two!

As soon as we got over the bar, I gave the pilot my package, and he got into his boat.  It was not necessary to shorten sail in order to do this, for the vessel’s way did not exceed five knots.

“Do you see the sail, hereaway in the south-eastern board,” said the pilot, as he went over the side, pointing towards a white speck on the ocean; “take care of that fellow, and give him as wide a berth as possible, or he may give you a look at Halifax, or Bermuda.”

“Halifax, or Bermuda!  I have nothing to do with either and shall not go there.  Why should I fear that sail?”

“On account of your cargo, and on account of your men.  That is His Majesty’s ship Leander; she has been off here, now, more than a week.  The inward-bound craft say she is acting under some new orders, and they name several vessels that have been seen heading north-east after she had boarded them.  This new war is likely to lead to new troubles on the coast, and it is well for all outward-bound ships to be on the look-out.”

“His Majesty’s ship” was a singular expression for an American to use, towards any sovereign, twenty years after the independence of the country was acknowledged.  But, it was common then, nor has it ceased entirely even among the newspapers of the present hour; so much harder is it to substitute a new language than to produce a revolution.  Notwithstanding this proof of bad taste in the pilot, I did not disregard his caution.  There had been certain unpleasant rumours, up in town for more than a month, that the two great belligerents would be apt to push each other into the old excesses, England and France at that day having such a monopoly of the ocean as to render them somewhat independent of most of the old-fashioned notions of the rights of neutrals.  As for America, she was cursed with the cant of economy—­an evil that is apt to produce as many bad consequences as the opposite vice, extravagance.  The money paid as interest on the sums expended in the war of 1812, might have maintained a navy that would have caused both belligerents