‘Because, captain,’ answered the little man, very promptly—‘because the wind comes in puffs, with lulls between; and neither I nor any other man can take a ship through these banks unless he has her in full command.’ This was so reasonable that there was no more to be said, and we waited impatiently for the decisive minute. At length it came. A heavy dank breath of air increased gradually but surely, until the schooner careened over heavily before it. The horizon to windward was becoming more and more obscured, the waves broke into white crests round us, and Bedloe signed to put the helm up and keep the schooner away. As the head of the ship fell off, and the sheets of the two great sails tore and struggled as they were being eased off, the pilot cried to Captain Jem that he would run the schooner close past the rock where his tent was, for that the most direct channel lay by it. Captain Jem told him that the ship was now under his charge; and at the same time emphatically slapped the stock of the pistol in his belt, as a hint that the charge was a responsible one. In less than five minutes, we were running fast among the breakers. The squall was now blowing fiercely, with pelting rain, which mingled with the flying brine, torn up from the foaming tops of the breakers. The sea ran strange and broken in the channels of the reefs, jumping and tumbling about, furrowed and rent by the fury of the wind, and the cross sweeps of the great surges, which the lines of reef flung into different directions, and often caused to sweep round and round in great seething cauldrons of foam. Through this howling waste of waters the schooner flew like a meteor, plunging along the white tops of the seas, diverging now to one side, now to another, as the skilful eye of the pilot directed; all her motions kept thoroughly in hand, and leaving reef after reef, each avoided by a dexterous jerk of the helm, lying foaming behind. We were now in the thick of the shoal. Ahead of us, and on the starboard bow, the rock which had been the dwarf’s habitation, rose blackly out of the water. I saw by the course that we were steering that we would shave it closely, and I sprang into the fore-rigging to keep a sharp look out. As I did so, I saw the mast of the ‘Piragua’ rocking beyond the coral ledge—the canoe being evidently well sheltered in the lee of the rock. The squall now grew heavier and heavier, and on we drove in the thick of it, the sea flashing and hissing around us. We were close upon the reef. I could have touched the coral with an oar, as the receding wave poured down its jagged ledges, when all at once Bedloe shouted with a voice, which, though shrill, was as clear as a trumpet— ‘Starboard—hard a starboard!’