“But, aunty, there is no pilot in the Swash—­for Captain Spike refused to take one on board.”

“Rose!—­you don’t understand what you are talking about!  No vessel ever yet sailed without a pilot, if indeed any can.  It’s opposed to the law, not to have a pilot; and now I remember to have heard your dear uncle say it wasn’t a voyage if a vessel didn’t take away a pilot.”

“But if they take them away, aunty, how can they send the letters ashore by them?”

“Poh! poh! child; you don’t know what you’re saying; but you’ll overlook it, I hope, Captain Spike, for Rose is quick, and will soon learn to know better.  As if letters couldn’t be sent ashore by the pilot, though he was a hundred thousand miles from land!  But, Captain Spike, you must let me know when we are about to get off the Sound, for I know that the pilot is always sent ashore with his letters, before the vessel gets off the Sound.”

“Yes, yes,” returned the captain, a little mystified by the widow, though he knew her so well, and understood her so well—­“you shall know, ma’am, when we get off soundings, for I suppose that is what you mean.”

“What is the difference?  Off the Sound, or off the soundings, of course, must mean the same thing.  But, Rosy, we will go below and write to your aunt at once, for I see a light-house yonder, and light-houses are always put just off the soundings.”

Rose, who always suspected her aunt’s nautical talk, though she did not know how to correct it, and was not sorry to put an end to it, now, by going below, and spreading her own writing materials, in readiness to write, as the other dictated.  Biddy Noon was present, sewing on some of her own finery.

“Now write, as I tell you, Rose,” commenced the widow—­“My dear sister Sprague—­Here we are, at last, just off the soundings, with light-houses all round us, and so many capes and islands in sight, that it does seem as if the vessel never could find its way through them all.  Some of these islands must be the West Indies”—­“Aunty, that can never be!” exclaimed Rose—­“we left New York only yesterday.”

“What of that?  Had it been old times, I grant you several days might be necessary to get a sight of the West Indies, but, now, when a letter can be written to a friend in Boston, and an answer received in half an hour, it requires no such time to go to the West Indies.  Besides, what other islands are there in this part of the world?—­they can’t be England—­”

“No—­no,”—­said Rose, at once seeing it would be preferable to admit they were the West Indies; so the letter went on:—­“Some of these islands must be the West Indies, and it is high time we saw some of them, for we are nearly off the Sound, and the light-houses are getting to be quite numerous.  I think we have already seen four since we left the wharf.  But, my dear sister Sprague, you will be delighted to hear how much better Rose’s health is already becoming—­”