Watch!" bawls the man on the cat-head,
as the last fake of the coil drops from his hand, and "Watch!
Ho!
watch!" is shouted by each one as the line falls from his hold;
until it comes to the mate, who tends the lead, and has the line
in coils on the quarter-deck. Eighty fathoms, and no bottom! A
depth as great as the height of St. Peter's! The line is snatched
in a block upon the swifter, and three or four men haul it in and
coil it away. The after yards are braced full, the studding-sails
hauled out again, and in a few minutes more the ship had her
whole way upon her. At four bells, backed again, hove the lead,
and - soundings! at sixty fathoms! Hurrah for Yankee land! Hand
over hand, we hauled the lead in, and the captain, taking it to
the light, found black mud on the bottom.
Studding-sails taken in; after yards filled, and ship kept on under
easy sail all night; the wind dying away.
The soundings on the American coast are so regular that a navigator
knows as well where he has made land, by the soundings, as he
would by seeing the land. Black mud is the soundings of Block
Island. As you go toward Nantucket, it changes to a dark sand;
then, sand and white shells; and on George's Banks, white sand;
and so on. Being off Block Island, our course was due east, to
Nantucket Shoals, and the South Channel; but the wind died away
and left us becalmed in a thick fog, in which we lay the whole
of Sunday.
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