“Perhaps the danger has been a little magnified,” she observed.  “Let us inquire of this other seaman what he thinks on these several points.—­And do you see all these serious dangers to be apprehended, friend, in trusting ourselves, at this season of the year, in a passage to the Carolinas, aboard of yonder ship?”

“Lord, Madam!” said the gray-headed mariner, with a chuckling laugh, “these are new-fashioned faults and difficulties, if they be faults and difficulties at all!  In my time, such matters were never heard of; and I confess I am so stupid as not to understand the half the young gentleman has been saying.”

“It is some time, I fancy, old man, since you were last at sea,” Wilder coolly observed.

“Some five or six years since the last time, and fifty since the first,” was the answer.

“Then you do not see the same causes for apprehension?” Mrs Wyllys once more demanded.

“Old and worn out as I am, Lady, if her Captain will give me a birth aboard her, I will thank him for the same as a favour.”

“Misery seeks any relief,” said Mrs de Lacey, in an under tone, and bestowing on her companions a significant glance.  “I incline to the opinion of the younger seaman; for he supports it with substantial, professional reasons.”

Mrs Wyllys suspended her questions, just as long as complaisance to the last speaker seemed to require and then she resumed them as follows, addressing her next inquiry to Wilder.

“And how do you explain this difference in judgment, between two men who ought both to be so well qualified to decide right?”

“I believe there is a well-known proverb which will answer that question,” returned the young man, smiling:  “But some allowance must be made for the improvements in ships; and, perhaps, some little deference to the stations we have respectively filled on board them.”

“Both very true.  Still, one would think the changes of half a dozen years cannot be so very considerable, in a profession that is so exceedingly ancient.”

“Your pardon, Madam.  They require constant practice to know them.  Now, I dare say that yonder worthy old tar is ignorant of the manner in which a ship, when pressed by her canvas, is made to ’cut the waves with her taffrail.’”

“Impossible!” cried the Admiral’s widow; “the youngest and the meanest mariner must have been struck with the beauty of such a spectacle.”

“Yes, yes,” returned the old tar, who wore the air of an offended man, and who, probably, had he been ignorant of any part of his art, was not just then in the temper to confess it; “many is the proud ship that I have seen doing the very same; and, as the lady says, a grand and comely sight it is!”

Wilder appeared confounded.  He bit his lip, like one who was over-reached either by excessive ignorance or exceeding cunning; but the self-complacency of Mrs de Lacey spared him the necessity of an immediate reply.