“This will be but a bad place for a retreat, if we should happen to fall in with enemies,” said Barnstable. “Where are we to look for this pilot, Mr. Merry, or how are we to know him; and what certainty have you that he will not betray us?” “The question you are to put to him is written on this bit of paper,” returned the boy, as he handed the other the word of recognition; “we made the signal on the point of the rock at yon headland, but, as he must have seen our boat, he will follow us to this place. As to his betraying us, he seems to have the confidence of Captain Munson, who has kept a bright lookout for him ever since we made the land.” “Ay,” muttered the lieutenant, “and I shall have a bright lookout kept on him now we are _on_ the land. I like not this business of hugging the shore so closely, nor have I much faith in any traitor. What think you of it, Master Coffin?” The hardy old seaman, thus addressed, turned his grave visage on his commander, and replied with a becoming gravity: “Give me a plenty of sea-room, and good canvas, where there is no occasion for pilots at all, sir. For my part, I was born on board a chebacco-man, and never could see the use of more land than now and then a small island to raise a few vegetables, and to dry your fish--I'm sure the sight of it always makes me feel uncomfortable, unless we have the wind dead off shore.” “Ah! Tom, you are a sensible fellow,” said Barnstable, with an air half comic, half serious. “But we must be moving; the sun is just touching those clouds to seaward, and God keep us from riding out this night at anchor in such a place as this.” Laying his hand on a projection of the rock above him, Barnstable swung himself forward, and following this movement with a desperate leap or two, he stood at once on the brow of the cliff. His cockswain very deliberately raised the midshipman after his officer, and proceeding with more caution but less exertion, he soon placed himself by his side. When they reached the level land that lay above the cliffs and began to inquire, with curious and wary eyes, into the surrounding scenery, the adventurers discovered a cultivated country, divided in the usual manner, by hedges and walls. Only one habitation for man, however, and that a small dilapidated cottage, stood within a mile of them, most of the dwellings being placed as far as convenience would permit from the fogs and damps of the ocean. “Here seems to be neither anything to apprehend, nor the object of our search,” said Barnstable, when he had taken the whole view in his survey: “I fear we have landed to no purpose, Mr. Merry. What say you, long Tom; see you what we want?” “I see no pilot, sir,” returned the cockswain; “but it's an ill wind that blows luck to nobody; there is a mouthful of fresh meat stowed away under that row of bushes, that would make a double ration to all hands in the Ariel.”