The boat had been
suffered to ride in the edge of the surf, since the appearance of the
sun; and the eyes of her crew were kept anxiously fixed on the cliffs,
though in vain, to discover the signal that was to call them to the
place of landing. After looking at his watch for the twentieth time, and
as often casting glances of uneasy dissatisfaction towards the shore,
the lieutenant exclaimed:
"A charming prospect, this, Master Coffin, but rather too much poetry in
it for your taste; I believe you relish no land that is of a harder
consistency than mud!"
"I was born on the waters, sir," returned the cockswain, from his snug
abode, where he was bestowed with his usual economy of room, "and it's
according to all things for a man to love his native soil. I'll not
deny, Captain Barnstable, but I would rather drop my anchor on a bottom
that won't broom a keel, though, at the same time, I harbor no great
malice against dry land."
"I shall never forgive it, myself, if any accident has befallen Griffith
in this excursion," rejoined the lieutenant; "his Pilot may be a better
man on the water than on terra firma, long Tom."
The cockswain turned his solemn visage, with an extraordinary meaning,
towards his commander, before he replied:
"For as long a time as I have followed the waters, sir, and that has
been ever since I've drawn my rations, seeing that I was born while the
boat was crossing Nantucket shoals, I've never known a pilot come off in
greater need, than the one we fell in with, when we made that stretch of
two on the land, in the dog-watch of yesterday.
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