But the sun is getting high; Petites Coquilles has been passed and left astern, the eastern end of Las Conchas is on the after-larboard-quarter, the briny waters of Lake Borgne flash far and wide their dazzling white and blue, and, as the little boat issues from the deep channel of the Rigolets, the white-armed waves catch her and toss her like a merry babe.  A triumph for the helmsman—­he it is who sighs, at intervals of tiresome frequency, for his wife.  He had, from the very starting-place in the upper waters of Bayou Sauvage, declared in favor of the Rigolets as—­wind and tide considered—­the most practicable of all the passes.  Now that they were out, he forgot for a moment the self-amusing plaint of conjugal separation to flaunt his triumph.  Would any one hereafter dispute with him on the subject of Louisiana sea-coast navigation?  He knew every pass and piece of water like A, B, C, and could tell, faster, much faster than he could repeat the multiplication table (upon which he was a little slow and doubtful), the amount of water in each at ebb tide—­Pass Jean or Petit Pass, Unknown Pass, Petit Rigolet, Chef Menteur,—­

Out on the far southern horizon, in the Gulf—­the Gulf of Mexico—­there appears a speck of white.  It is known to those on board the Pique-en-terre, the moment it is descried, as the canvas of a large schooner.  The opinion, first expressed by the youthful husband, who still reclines with the tiller held firmly under his arm, and then by another member of the company who sits on the centreboard-well, is unanimously adopted, that she is making for the Rigolets, will pass Petites Coquilles by eleven o’clock, and will tie up at the little port of St. Jean, on the bayou of the same name, before sundown, if the wind holds anywise as it is.

On the other hand, the master of the distant schooner shuts his glass, and says to the single passenger whom he has aboard that the little sail just visible toward the Rigolets is a sloop with a half-deck, well filled with men, in all probability a pleasure party bound to the Chandeleurs on a fishing and gunning excursion, and passes into comments on the superior skill of landsmen over seamen in the handling of small sailing craft.

By and by the two vessels near each other.  They approach within hailing distance, and are announcing each to each their identity, when the young man at the tiller jerks himself to a squatting posture, and, from under a broad-brimmed and slouched straw hat, cries to the schooner’s one passenger: 

“Hello, Challie Keene.”

And the passenger more quietly answers back: 

“Hello, Raoul, is that you?”

M. Innerarity replied, with a profane parenthesis, that it was he.

“You kin hask Sylvestre!” he concluded.

The doctor’s eye passed around a semicircle of some eight men, the most of whom were quite young, but one or two of whom were gray, sitting with their arms thrown out upon the wash-board, in the dark neglige of amateur fishermen and with that exultant look of expectant deviltry in their handsome faces which characterizes the Creole with his collar off.