96 
CAPE COD. 
There were many vessels, like gulls, skimming over 
the surface of the sea, now half concealed in its troughs, 
their dolphin-strikers ploughing the water, now tossed on 
the top of the billows. One, a barque standing down par¬ 
allel with the coast, suddenly furled her sails, came to 
anchor, and swung round in the wind, near us, only half 
a mile from the shore. At first we thought that her 
captain wished to communicate with us, and perhaps we 
did not regard the signal of distress, which a mariner 
would have understood, and he cursed us for cold-hearted 
wreckers who turned our backs on him. For hours we 
could still see her anchored there behind us, and we 
wondered how she could afford to loiter so long in her 
course. Or was she a smuggler who had chosen that 
wild beach to land her cargo on ? Or did they wish to 
catch fish, or paint their vessel ? Erelong other barks, 
and brigs, and schooners, which had in the mean while 
doubled the Cape, sailed by her in the smacking breeze, 
and our consciences were relieved. Some of these ves¬ 
sels lagge'd behind, while others steadily went ahead. 
We narrowly watched their rig and the cut of their jibs, 
and how they walked the water, for there was all the 
difference between them that there is between living 
creatures. But we wondered that they should be re¬ 
membering Boston and New York and Liverpool, steer¬ 
ing for them, out there ; as if the sailor might forget his 
peddling business on such a grand highway. They had 
perchance brought oranges from the Western Isles ; and 
were they carrying back the peel ? We might as well 
transport our old traps across the ocean of eternity. Is 
that but another trading flood,” with its blessed isles ? 
Is Heaven such a harbor as the Liverpool docks ? 
Still held on without a break, the inland barrens and 
