"There goes a new boom, aloft!" cried Ludlow, interrupting the discursive
discourse of the master. "He is bent on getting in with the shore."

"If these puffs come much heavier," returned the master, whose opinions of
the chase vacillated with his professional feelings, "we shall have him at
our own play, and try the qualities of his brigantine! The sea has a green
spot to windward, and there are strong symptoms of a squall on the water.
One can almost see into the upper world, with an air clear as this. Your
northers sweep the mists off America, and leave both sea and land bright
as a school-boy's face, before the tears have dimmed it, after the first
flogging. You have sailed in the southern seas, Captain Ludlow, I know;
for we were shipmates among the islands, years that are past: but I never
heard whether you have run the Gibralter passage, and seen the blue water
that lies among the Italy mountains?"

"I made a cruise against the Barbary states, when a lad; and we had
business that took us to the northern shore."

"Ay! 'Tis your northern shore, I mean! There is not a foot of it all, from
the rock at the entrance to the Fare of Messina, that eye of mine hath not
seen. No want of look-outs and land-marks in that quarter! Here we are
close aboard of America, which lies some eight or ten leagues there-away
to the northward of us, and some forty astern; and yet, if it were not for
our departure, with the color of the water, and a knowledge of the
soundings, one might believe himself in the middle of the Atlantic. Many a
good ship plumps upon America before she knows where she is going; while
in yon sea, you may run for a mountain, with its side in full view,
four-and-twenty hours on a stretch, before you see the town at its foot."

"Nature has compensated for the difference, in defending the approach to