Page:The crater; or, Vulcan's peak.djvu/163

 OR, VULCAN S PEAK. 157 reef at once, further than he had ever yet ventured in the dingui, in order to explore the seas around him. Accord ingly, he put some food on board, loosened his fasts, and made sail. The instant the boat moved ahead, and began to obey her helm, Mark felt as if he had found a new companion. Hitherto Kitty had, in a measure, filled this place; but a boat had been the young man s delight on the Delaware, in his boyhood, arid he had not tacked his present craft more than two or three times, before he caught himself talking to it, arid commending it, as he would a human being. As the wind usually blew in the same direction, arid generally a good stiff breeze, Mark beat up between the Reef and Guano Island, working round the weather end of the former, until he came out at the anchorage of the Rancocus. After beating about in that basin a little while, as if merely to show off the Bridget to the ship, Mark put the former close by the wind, and stood off in the channel by which he and Bob had brought the latter into her pre sent berth. .. It was easy enough to avoid all such breakers as would be dangerous to a boat, by simply keeping out of white water ; but the Bridget could pass over most of the reefs with impunity, on account of the depth of the sea on them. Mark beat up, on short tacks, therefore, until he found the two buoys between which he had brought the ship, and passing to windward of them, he stood off in the direction where he expected to rind the reef over which the Ranco cus had beaten. He was not long in making this disco very. There still floated the buoy of the bower, watching as faithfully as the seaman on his look-out ! Mark ran the boat up to this well-tried sentinel, and caught the lanyard, holding on by it, after lowering his sails. The boat was now moored by the buoy-rope of the ship s anchor, and it occurred to our young man that a certain use might be made of this melancholy memorial of the ca lamity that had befallen the Rancocus. The anchor lay quite near a reef, on it indeed in one sense; and it was in such places that fish most abounded. Fishing-tackle was in the boat, and Mark let down a line. His success was prodigious. The fish were hauled in almost as fast as he VOL. I. -14