And Mr. Gabriel’d never heard it before, and he made him sing it again
and again.

"The boatie rows, the boatie rows,
The boatie rows indeed,"

repeated Mr. Gabriel, and he said it was the only song he knew that held
the click of the oar in the rowlock.

The little birds went skimming by us, as we sailed, their breasts upon
the water, and we could see the gunners creeping through the marshes
beside them.

"The wind changes," said Mr. Gabriel. "The equinox treads close behind
us. Sst! Is it that you do not feel its breath? And you hear nothing?"

"It’s the Soul of the Bar," said Dan; and he fell to telling us one of
the wild stories that fishermen can tell each other by the lantern,
rocking outside at night in the dory.

The wind was dead east, and now we flew before it, and now we tacked in
it, up and up the winding stream, and always a little pointed sail came
skimming on in suit.

"What sail is that, Dan?" asked I. "It looks like the one that flitted
ahead this morning."

"It _is_ the one," said Dan,——for he’d brought up a whole horde of
superstitious memories, and a gloom that had been hovering off and on his
face settled there for good. "As much of a one as that was. It’s no sail
at all. It’s a death-sign. And I’ve never been down here and seen it but
trouble was on its heels. Georgie! there’s two of them!"

We all looked, but it was hidden in a curve, and when it stole in sight
again there _were_ two of them, filmy and faint as spirits’ wings; and
while we gazed they vanished, whether supernaturally or in the mist that
was rising mast-high I never thought, for my blood was frozen as it ran.

"You have fear?" asked Mr. Gabriel,——his face perfectly pale, and his eye
almost lost in darkness. "If it is a phantom, it can do you no harm."

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