“There, Miss Rose,” he said, with a didactic sort of air, pointing with his short, thick finger at the little bay which was just opening to their view; “there’s as neat a cove as a craft need bring up in. That _used to be_ a capital place to lie in, to wait for a wind to pass the Gate; but it has got to be most too public for my taste. I’m rural, I tell Mulford, and love to get in out-of-the-way berths with my brig, where she can see salt-meadows, and smell the clover. You never catch me down in any of the crowded slips, around the markets, or any where in that part of the town, for I _do_ love country air. That’s Hallet’s Cove, Miss Rose, and a pretty anchorage it would be for us, if the wind and tide didn’t sarve to take us through the Gate.” “Are we near the Gate, Capt. Spike?” asked Rose, the fine bloom on her cheek lessening a little, under the apprehension that formidable name is apt to awaken in the breasts of the inexperienced. “Half a mile, or so. It begins just at the other end of this island on our larboard hand, and will be all over in about another half mile, or so. It’s no such bad place, a’ter all, is Hell-Gate, to them that’s used to it. I call myself a pilot in Hell-Gate, though I _have_ no branch.” “I wish, Capt. Spike, I could teach you to give that place its proper and polite name. We call it Whirl-Gate altogether now,” said the relict. “Well, that’s new to me,” cried Spike. “I _have_ heard some chicken-mouthed folk say _Hurl_-Gate, but this is the first time I ever heard it called Whirl-Gate—they’ll get it to Whirlagig-Gate next. I don’t think that my old commander, Capt. Budd called the passage any thing but honest, up and down Hell-Gate.” “That he did—that he did—and all my arguments and reading could not teach him any better. I proved to him that it was Whirl-Gate, as any one can see that it ought to be. It is full of Whirlpools, they say, and that shows what Nature meant the name to be.” “But, aunty,” put in Rose, half reluctantly, half anxious to speak, “what has _gate_ to do with whirlpools? You will remember it is called a gate—the gate to that wicked place I suppose is meant.” “Rose, you amaze me! How can _you_, a young woman of only nineteen, stand up for so vulgar a name as Hell-Gate?” “Do you think it as vulgar as Hurl-Gate, aunty? To me it always seems the most vulgar to be straining at gnats.”