“If it come to blow in squalls, Commodore,” observed the intruder, with a gravity that half deceived the attentive Frenchman, while he pointed to the bag in which the latter wore his hair, “you’ll be troubled to carry your broad pennant.  But so experienced an officer has not put to sea without having a storm-cue in readiness for foul weather.”

The valet did not, or affected not to understand the allusion, maintaining an air of dignified but silent superiority.

“The gentleman is in a foreign service, and does not understand an English mariner!  The worst that can come, after all, of too much top-hamper, is to cut away, and let it drift with the scud.  May I make bold to ask, judge, if the courts have done any thing, of late, concerning the freebooters among the islands?”

“I have not the honor to bear Her Majesty’s commission,” coldly returned Van Staats of Kinderhook, to whom this question had been hardily put.

“The best navigator is sometimes puzzled by a hazy observation, and many an old seaman has taken a fog-bank for solid ground.  Since you are not in the courts, Sir, I wish you joy; for it is running among shoals to be cruising there, whether as judge or suitor.  One is never fairly snug and landlocked, while in company of a lawyer, and yet the devil himself cannot always give the sharks a good offing.  A pretty sheet of water, friends, and one as snug as rotten cables and foul winds can render desirable, is this bay of York!”

“You are a mariner of the long voyage,” returned the Patroon, unwilling that Alida should not believe him equal to bandying wits with the stranger.

“Long, or short; Calcutta, or Cape Cod; dead reckoning, eye-sight, or star-gazing, all’s one to your real dolphin.  The shape of the coast between Fundy and Horn, is as familiar to my eye, as an admirer to this pretty young lady; and as to the other shore, I have run it down oftener than the Commodore, here, has ever set his pennant, blow high or blow low.  A cruise like this is a Sunday in my navigation; though I dare say, you took leave of the wife, blessed the children, overhauled the will, and sent to ask a good word from the priest, before you came aboard?”

“Had these ceremonies been observed, the danger would not have been increased,” said the young Patroon, anxious to steal a glance at la belle Barberie, though his timidity caused him, in truth, to look the other way.  “One is never nearer danger, for being prepared to meet it.”

“True; we must all die, when the reckoning is out.  Hang or drown—­gibbet or bullet clears the world of a great deal of rubbish, or the decks would get to be so littered that the vessel could not be worked.  The last cruise is the longest of all; and honest papers, with a clean bill of health, may help a man into port, when he is past keeping the open sea.  How now, schipper! what lies are floating about the docks this morning? when did the last Albany-man get his tub down the river, or whose gelding has been ridden to death in chase of a witch.”