“Admitting that, by keeping mid-channel, she goes clear of White Stone and Frogs,” he said, giving to Throgmorton’s its vulgar name, “he must be a wizard, to know that the Stepping-Stones lie directly across his course, and that a vessel must steer away northerly, or bring up on rocks that will as surely hold him as if he were built there.  Then he runs his chance for the Executioners, which are as prettily placed as needs be, to make our trade flourish, besides the Middle Ground further east, though I count but little on that, having often tried to find it myself, without success.  Courage, noble captain! if the fellow be the man you say, we shall get a nearer look at him before the sun sets; for certainly he who has run the Gate without a pilot in safety, has had as much good luck as can fall to his share in one day.”

The opinion of the East River Branch proved erroneous.  Notwithstanding the hidden perils by which she was environed, the Water-Witch continued her course, with a speed that increased as the wind rose with the sun, and with an impunity from harm that amazed all who were in the secret of her situation.  Off Throgmorton’s there was, in truth, a danger that might even have baffled the sagacity of the followers of the mysterious lady, had they not been aided by accident.  This is the point where the straitened arm of the sea expands into the basin of the Sound.  A broad and inviting passage lies directly before the navigator, while, like the flattering prospects of life, numberless hidden obstacles are in wait to arrest the unheeding and ignorant.

The ‘Skimmer of the Seas’ was deeply practised in all the intricacies and dangers of the shoals and rocks.  Most of his life had been passed in threading the one, or in avoiding the other.  So keen and quick had his eye become, in detecting the presence of any of those signs which forewarn the mariner of danger, that a ripple on the surface, or a deeper shade in the color of the water, rarely escaped his vigilance.  Seated on the top-sail-yard of his brigantine, he had overlooked the passage from the moment they were through the Gate, and issued his mandates to those below with a precision and promptitude that were not surpassed by the trained conductor of the Coquette himself.  But when his sight embraced the wide reach of water that lay in front, as his little vessel swept round the head-land of Throgmorton, he believed there no longer existed a reason for so much care.  Still there was a motive for hesitation.  A heavily-moulded and dull-sailing coaster was going eastward not a league ahead of the brigantine, while one of the light sloops of those waters was coming westward still further in the distance.  Notwithstanding the wind was favorable to each alike, both vessels had deviated from the direct line, and were steering towards a common centre, near an island that was placed more than a mile to the northward of the straight course.  A mariner, like him of the India-shawl, could not