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So up and down the Atlantic seaboard they cruised, and for the fifty years that marooning was in the flower of its glory it was a sorrowful time for the coasters of New England, the middle provinces, and the Virginias, sailing to the West Indies with their cargoes of salt fish, grain, and tobacco.
During this year the French took 330 ships from the English, whereas the English took only 110 from the French. In reality, however, the gain was on the side of Great Britain, the French ships captured being chiefly large privateers and rich armed merchantmen, while those England lost were mostly coasters and colliers.
To these were to be added some twenty smaller coasters and river-craft, most of whom were the shapeless and slow-moving masses which then plied, in voyages of a month's duration, between the two principal towns of the colony. The appeal of the Coquette, therefore, at that hour and in that age, was not likely to be quickly answered.
The existence of the inlet, which united the ocean with the waters of the Cove, was but little known, except to the few whose avocations kept them near the spot. The pass being much more than half the time closed, its varying character, and the little use that could be made of it under any circumstances, prevented the place from being a subject of general interest, with the coasters.
As has been said, not a single living thing was visible, but there were several craft moored alongside, small vessels mostly, such as coasters, fishing craft, and lighters; but probably a portion at least of the crews of these craft lived and slept aboard them, and a restless man coming up on deck for a breath of fresh air at an inopportune moment might suffice to ruin everything.
Thus, it was a practice with the coasters to run for the extremity of this cape, and then to stand away on a due south-west course, certain of seeing the mountains for which they were steering in the next few hours. Among those who plied to and fro in this manner, were many who had no very accurate notions of navigation; and, to them, this simple process was found to be quite useful.
When, however, by the direction of the colonel, the cloth was removed and the old mahogany table that Chad rubbed down every morning with a cork was left with only the glasses, a pair of coasters and their decanters, the Madeira within reach of the judge's hand, the colonel rose from his chair and spread out on the polished surface a stained and ragged map, labeled in one corner in quaint letters, "Lands of John Carter, Esquire, of Carter Hall."
One of these coasters lay about half-way between the two hostile vessels, at anchor, having come-to, after making some fruitless efforts to get to the northward, by means of the expiring west wind.
It may be a pleasant recollection for the man who, in some ten or twenty years, beholds the docks crowded with steamers and coasters, and the railway busy in conveying seaborne cargoes, to recall the fact that he saw the infancy, if not the birth, of that teeming trade; for it is not to every man that it is given to behold the commencement of such a future as seems promised to gloomy, swampy Great Grimsby.
Glancing around him, and signalling his unseen companions to follow him up, he ran along the edge of the quay until he had passed the coaster, when he found himself close to several tiers of lighters, all moored three abreast, beyond which were two small coasters, moored one outside the other, then more lighters, and a whole crowd of fishing craft.
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