It was now much easier steering, though untiring vigilance was still necessary.  A boat may appear to fly, and yet the “send of the sea” shall glance ahead of it with the velocity of a bird.  Nothing that goes through, or on, the water—­and the last is the phrase best suited to the floating of a bark canoe—­can ever be made to keep company with that feathery foam, which, under the several names of “white-caps”—­an in-shore and lubber’s term—­“combs,” “breaking of the seas,” “the wash,” etc., etc., glances by a vessel in a blow, or comes on board her even when she is running before it.  We have often watched these clouds of water, as they have shot ahead of us, when ploughing our own ten or eleven knot through the brine, and they have ever appeared to us as so many useful admonishers of what the power of God is, as compared to the power of man.  The last shall construct his ship, fit her with all the appliances of his utmost art, sail her with the seaman’s skill, and force her through her element with something like railroad speed; yet will the seas “send” their feathery crests past her, like so many dolphins, or porpoises, sporting under her fore-foot.  It is this following sea which becomes so very dangerous in heavy gales, and which compels the largest ships frequently to heave to, in order that they may present their bows to its almost resistless power.

But our adventurers had no such gales as those we mean, or any such seas to withstand.  The wind blew fresh from the south, and Michigan can get up a very respectable swell at need.  Like the seas in all the great lakes, it was short, and all the worse for that.  The larger the expanse of water over which the wind passes, the longer is the sea, and the easier is it for the ship to ride on it.  Those of Lake Michigan, however, were quite long enough for a bark canoe, and glad enough were both Margery and Dorothy when they found their two little vessels lashed together, and wearing an air of more stability than was common to them.  Le Bourdon’s sail was first spread, and it produced an immediate relief from the washing of the waves.  The drift of a bark canoe, in a smart blow, is considerable, it having no hold on the water to resist it; but our adventurers fairly flew as soon as the cotton cloth was opened.  The wind being exactly south, by steering due north, or dead before it, it was found possible to carry the sail in the other canoe, borne out on the opposite side; and from the moment that was opened, all the difficulty was reduced to steering so “small,” as seamen term it, as to prevent one or the other of the lugs from jibing.  Had this occurred, however, no very serious consequences would have followed, the precaution taken of lashing the craft together rendering capsizing next to impossible.