depth, keeping its own secrets from the eye of man, as impenetrably as mid-ocean could.

“Well, Miles Coverdale,” said Foster, “you are the helmsman. How do you mean to manage this business?”

“I shall let the boat drift, broadside foremost, past that stump,” I replied. “I know the bottom, having sounded it in fishing. The shore, on this side, after the first step or two, goes off very abruptly; and there is a pool, just by the stump, twelve or fifteen feet deep. The current could not have force enough to sweep any sunken object, even if partially buoyant, out of that hollow.”

“Come, then,” said Silas; “but I doubt whether I can touch bottom with this hay-rake, if it’s as deep as you say.