“Why is everybody so still and seemingly so anxious, Harry Mulford?” she asked, speaking in a low tone herself, as if desirous of conforming to a common necessity.  “Is there any new danger here?  I thought the Gate had been passed altogether, some hours ago?”

“So it has.  D’ye see that large dark mass on the water, off the Point, which seems almost as huge as the fort, with lights above it?  That is a revenue-steamer which came out of York a few hours before us.  We wish to get past her without being troubled by any of her questions.”

“And what do any in this brig care about her questions?  They can be answered, surely.”

“Ay, ay, Rose—­they may be answered, as you say, but the answers sometimes are unsatisfactory.  Captain Spike, for some reason or other, is uneasy, and would rather not have anything to say to her.  He has the greatest aversion to speaking the smallest craft when on a coast.”

“And that’s the reason he has undressed his Molly, as he calls her, that he might not be known.”

Mulford turned his head quickly toward his companion, as if surprised by her quickness of apprehension, but he had too just a sense of his duty to make any reply.  Instead of pursuing the discourse, he adroitly contrived to change it, by pointing out to Rose the manner in which they were getting on, which seemed to be very successfully.

Although the Swash was under much reduced canvas, she glided along with great ease and with considerable rapidity of motion.  The heavy night air kept her canvas distended, and the weatherly set of the tide, trifling as it yet was, pressed her up against the breeze, so as to turn all to account.  It was apparent enough, by the manner in which objects on the land were passed, that the crisis was fast approaching.  Rose rejoined her aunt, in order to await the result, in nearly breathless expectation.  At that moment, she would have given the world to be safe on shore.  This wish was not the consequence of any constitutional timidity, for Rose was much the reverse from timid, but it was the fruit of a newly-awakened and painful, though still vague, suspicion.  Happy, thrice happy was it for one of her naturally confiding and guileless nature, that distrust was thus opportunely awakened, for she was without a guardian competent to advise and guide her youth, as circumstances required.

The brig was not long in reaching the passage that opened to the Sound.  It is probable she did this so much the sooner because Spike kept her a little off the wind, with a view of not passing too near the steamer.  At this point, the direction of the passage changes at nearly a right angle, the revenue-steamer lying on a line with the Neck, and leaving a sort of bay, in the angle, for the Swash to enter.  The land was somewhat low in all directions but one, and that was by drawing a straight line from the Point, through the steamer, to the Long Island shore.  On the latter, and in that quarter, rose a bluff of