“Too true! too true!” said Mrs de Lacey, in a sort of professional horror. “These things had escaped me; but I see them all, now they are mentioned. Such neglect is highly culpable; more especially to rely on bobstays and gammonings for the security of a bowsprit! Really, Mrs Wyllys, I can never consent that my niece should embark in such a vessel.” The calm, penetrating eye of Wyllys had been riveted on the countenance of Wilder while he was speaking, and she now turned it, with undisturbed serenity, on the Admiral’s widow, to reply. “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.”