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The short sentences written down upon the old paper with yellow ink came slowly back to me one after the other with a charm as lulling and perfidious as that exercised by a magic incantation: "Fair weather . . . beautiful sea . . . light breeze from the south-east . . . Shoals of dolphins . . . passing to larboard."
Our depth of water in the streight was from four to nine fathom, with every where good anchorage, except upon the bank, which lies two leagues to the northward of Wallis's Islands, where at low water there are but three fathom: For a more particular knowledge of this streight, and of the situations of the several islands and shoals on the eastern coast of New Wales, I refer to the chart where they are delineated with all the accuracy that circumstances would admit; yet, with respect to the shoals, I cannot pretend that one half of them are laid down, nor can it be supposed possible that one half of them should be discovered in the course of a single navigation: Many islands also must have escaped my pencil, especially between latitude 20° and 22°, where we saw islands out at sea as far as an island could be distinguished; it must not therefore be supposed, by future navigators, that where no shoal or island is laid down in my chart, no shoal or island will be found in these seas: It is enough that the situation of those that appear in the chart is faithfully ascertained, and, in general, I have the greatest reason to hope that it will be found as free from error as any that has not been corrected by subsequent and successive observations.
"There ben't any pilot here, master," said he; "we ben't pilots." "Why, what a story you do tell!" roared the boatswain. "D'ye suppose I've never been down here before, not to know that every man about here knows the passes of the shoals?" The fellow still held his pipe in his hand. He looked at another one of the men. "Do you know the passes in over the shoals, Jem?" said he.
At daybreak on the 26th of September they mustered at the Sycamore Shoals on the Watauga, over a thousand strong. It was a different picture they made from that other great gathering at the same spot when Henderson had made his purchase in money of the Dark and Bloody Ground, and Sevier and Robertson had bought for the Wataugans this strip of Tennessee. There were no Indians in this picture.
In Wilson's Bay, a sweet place, three miles from the village by water, or one and a half by land, we caught as many more on another afternoon. Near the upper end of Long Island are other prolific bass shoals, where the fisherman may enjoy himself. Indeed, he can scarcely go amiss in the surrounding waters. The black bass of the St.
"These are guests of the Emir Feisul," he announced. "Send the bill to me." We were piled into the waiting autos. Mabel, Grim and I rode in the first one, with the Syrian officers up beside the driver; Jeremy, Narayan Singh and Hadad followed; and we went through the dark streets like sea-monsters splashing over shoals, unseen I think certainly unrecognized.
Randal continued, "And I shall esteem it the highest honour you can bestow on me, to be permitted to assist you in forestalling danger." "Sir, I thank you; you have my secret, and I feel assured it is safe, for I speak to an English gentleman. There may be family reasons why I should avoid the Count di Peschiera; and, indeed, he is safest from shoals who steers clearest of his relations."
We passed some bateaux pecheurs, saw sundry shoals of fish furrowing the water, and after two hours we were bumping on the rocks outlying Mombe Creek and Nenga Oga village.
To pass this place in the night seemed easy work enough, as it would be hard for the sentry to make a vessel out disguised as we were; but to avoid the shoals and sand-banks at the river's mouth, in a pitch-dark night, seemed to me, after carefully studying the chart, to be a most difficult matter.
From this the south shoal bears S. by E. and the north shoal NNE., each being 3 1/4 miles distant from it. The water breaks on these in rough weather and, though of small extent, they are dangerous to passing vessels bound from Cape Sable to Massachusetts ports, across whose course they lie directly. Except for these shoals, the water ranges from 15 to 60 fathoms.
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