At the end of three days, Roswell Gardiner supposed himself to be about the latitude of Cape Henry, and some thirty or forty leagues from the land.  It was much easier to compute the last, than the first of these material facts.  Of course, he had no observations.  The sun had not been visible since the storm commenced, and nearly half the time, during the last day, the two vessels were shut in from one another, by mists and a small rain.  It blew more in squalls than it had done, and the relative positions of the schooners were more or less affected by the circumstance.  Sometimes, one would be to windward, and ahead; then, the other would obtain a similar advantage.  Once or twice they seemed about to separate, the distance between them getting to be so considerable, as, apparently, to render it impossible to keep in company; then the craft would change places, by a slow process, passing quite near to each other again.  No one could tell, at the moment, precisely why these variations occurred; though the reasons, generally, were well understood by all on board them.  Squalls, careless steering, currents, eddies, and all the accidents of the ocean, contribute to create these vacillating movements, which will often cause two vessels of equal speed, and under the same canvass, to seem to be of very different qualities.  In the nights, the changes were greatest, often placing the schooners leagues asunder, and seemingly separating them altogether.  But, Roswell Gardiner became satisfied that Captain Daggett stuck by him intentionally; for on all such occasions if his schooner happened to be out of the way, he managed to close again, ere the danger of separating became too great to be overcome.

Our mariners judged of their distance from the land, by means of the lead.  If the American coast is wanting in the sublime and picturesque, and every traveller must admit its defects in both, it has the essential advantage of graduated soundings.  So regular is the shoaling of the water, and so studiously have the fathoms been laid down, that a cautious navigator can always feel his way in to the coast, and never need place his vessel on the beach, as is so often done, without at least knowing that he was about to do so.  Men become adventurous by often-repeated success; and the struggles of competition, the go-ahead-ism of the national character, and the trouble it gives to sound in deep water, all contribute to cast away the reckless and dashing navigator, on this as well as on other coasts, and this to his own great surprise; but, whenever such a thing does happen, unless in cases of stress of weather, the reader may rest assured it is because those who have had charge of the stranded vessel have neglected to sound.  The mile-stones on a highway do not more accurately note the distances, than does the lead on nearly the whole of the American coast.  Thus Roswell Gardiner judged himself to be about thirty-two or three marine leagues from the land, on the evening of the third day of that gale of wind.  He placed the schooner in the latitude of Cape Henry on less certain data, though that was the latitude in which he supposed her to be, by dead reckoning.