From this time, for twenty days, the passage of the Dawn had nothing unusual.  We crossed the Banks in forty-six, and made as straight a course for the western extremity of England, as the winds would allow.  For several days, I was uncertain whether to go north-about, or not, believing that I should fall in with fewer cruisers by doubling Scotland, than by running up channel.  The latter was much the nearest route; though so much depends on the winds, that I determined to let these last govern.  Until we had made two-thirds of our distance across the ocean, the winds had stood very much at south-west; and, though we had no heavy weather, our progress was good; but in 20 deg. east from Greenwich, we got north-easters, and our best tack being the larboard, I stood for ten days to the southward and eastward.  This brought us into the track of every thing going to, or coming from, the Mediterranean; and, had we stood on far enough, we should have made the land somewhere in the Bay of Biscay.  I knew we should find the ocean dotted with English cruisers, however, as soon as we got into the European waters, and we tacked to the north-west, when about a hundred leagues from the land.

The thirty-third day out proved one of great importance to me.  The wind had shifted to south-west, and it was blowing fresh, with very thick weather—­rain, mingled with a fine mist, that often prevented one’s seeing a quarter of a mile from the ship.  The change occurred at midnight, and there was every prospect of the wind’s standing until it shoved us into the chops of the channel, from which we were then distant about four hundred miles, according to my own calculation.  Marble had the watch at four o’clock, and he sent for me, that I might decide on the course to be steered and the sail to be carried.  The course was N. N. East; but, as for the sail, I determined to stand on under our top-sails and fore-course, spanker and jib, until I could get a look by daylight.  When the sun was fairly up, there was no change, and I gave orders to get along some of the larger studding-sails, and to set the main-top-gallant sail, having my doubts whether the spars would bear any more canvass, under the stiff breeze that was blowing.

“This is no great distance from the spot where we surprised the Lady of Nantes, Captain Wallingford,” Marble observed to me, as I stood overlooking the process of bending a fore-top-mast studding-sail, in which he was engaged with his own hands; “nor was the weather any thicker then than it is now, though that was a haze, and this is a mist.”

“You are out of your longitude a few hundred miles, Master Moses, but the comparison is well enough, otherwise.  We have twice the wind and sea we had then, moreover, and that was dry weather, while this is, to speak more gingerly, a little moist.”

“Ay, ay, sir; there is just that difference.  Them were pleasant days, Captain Wallingford—­I say nothing ag’in these—­but them ’ere were pleasant times, as all in the Crisis must allow.”