“Certainly,” answered the widow, with dignity—“and that is a sufficient reason, Rose, why one vessel should chase, and another should run. If you had heard your poor uncle relate, as I have done, all his chasings and runnings away, in the war times, child, you would understand these things better. Why, I've heard your uncle say that, in some of his long voyages, he has run thousands and thousands of miles, with sails set on both sides, and all over his ship!”
“Yes, aunty, and so have I, but that was 'running before the wind,' as he used to call it.”
“I s'pose, however, Miss Rose,” put in Spike, who saw that the niece would soon get the better of the aunt;—“I s'pose, Miss Rose, that you'll acknowledge that America is at war with Mexico?”
“I am sorry to say that such is the fact, but I remember to have heard you say, yourself, Captain Spike, when my aunt was induced to undertake this voyage, that you did not consider there was the smallest danger from any Mexicans.”
“Yes, you did, Captain Spike,” added the aunt—“you did say there was no danger from Mexicans.”
“Nor is there a bit, Madam Budd, if Miss Rose, and your honoured self, will only hear me. There is no danger, because the brig has the heels of anything Mexico can send to sea. She has sold her steamers, and, as for anything else under her flag, I would not care a straw.”
“The steamer from which we ran, last evening, and which actually fired off a cannon at us, was not Mexican, but American,” said Rose, with a pointed manner that put Spike to his trumps.
“Oh! that steamer—” he stammered—“that was a race—only a race, Miss Rose, and I wouldn't let her come near me, for the world. I should never hear the last of it, in the insurance offices, and on 'change, did I let her overhaul us. You see, Miss Rose—you see, Madam Budd—” Spike ever found it most convenient to address his mystifying discourse to the aunt, in preference to addressing it to the niece—“You see, Madam Budd, the master of that craft and I are old cronies—sailed together when boys, and set great store by each other. We met only last evening, just a'ter I had left your own agreeable mansion, Madam Budd, and says he, 'Spike, when do you sail?' 'To-morrow's flood, Jones,' says I—his name is Jones;—Peter Jones, and as good a fellow as ever lived. 'Do you go by the Hook, or by Hell-Gate—'”
“Hurl-Gate, Captain Spike, if you please—or Whirl-Gate, which some people think is the true sound; but the other way of saying it is awful.”
“Well, the captain, my old master, always called it Hell-Gate, and I learned the trick from him—”