As soon as in the Atlantic, I took care to avoid everything we saw,
and nothing got near us, until we had actually made the Highlands of
Navesink. An English sloop-of-war, however, had stood into the angles
of the coast, formed by Long Island and the Jersey shore, giving us a
race for the Hook. I did not know whether I ought to be afraid of this
cruiser, or not, but my mind was made up, not to be boarded if it
could be helped. We succeeded in passing ahead, and entered the Hook,
while he was still a mile outside of the bar. I got a pilot on the
bar, as was then very usual, and stood up towards the town with
studding-sails set, it being just a twelvemoth, almost to an hour,
from the day when I passed up the bay in the Crisis. The pilot took
the ship in near Coenties slip, Marble's favourite berth, and we had
her secured, and her sails unbent before the sun set.
CHAPTER XXVII.
"With look like patient Job's, eschewing evil;
With motions graceful as a bird's in air;
Thou art, in sober truth, the veriest devil
That ere clinched fingers in a captive's hair."
HALLECK.
There was about an hour of daylight, when I left the compting-house of
the consignees, and pursued my way up Wall Street to Broadway. I was
on my way to the City Hotel, then, as now, one of the best inns of the
town.
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