“I am sorry to say that such is the fact, but I remember to have heard you say, yourself, Capt. 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, Capt. 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 honored self will only hear me. There is no danger, because the brig has the heels of any thing Mexico can send to sea. She has sold her steamers, and, as for any thing 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, Capt. 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—”
“I know he did, and so do all sailors; but genteel people, now-a-days, say nothing but Hurl-Gate, or Whirl-Gate.”
Rose smiled at this, as did Mulford; but neither said any thing, the subject having once before been up between them. As for ourselves, we are still so old fashioned as to say, and write, Hell-Gate, and intend so to do, in spite of all the Yankees that have yet passed through it, or who ever shall pass through it, and that is saying a great deal. We do not like changing names to suit their uneasy spirits.
“Call the place Hurl-Gate, and go on with your story,” said the widow, complacently.