The mate made no further remark; but the knit of his brow, as he passed his hand mechanically across his forehead, made me fancy that he was inclined to speak out more strongly.
"All very well, Curtis," I said, "but I don't know what to think about trying new routes.

Here we are at the 7th of October, and if we are to reach Europe before the bad weather sets in, I should suppose there is not a day to be lost." "Right, sir, quite right; there is not a day to be lost." Struck by his manner, I ventured to add, "Do you mind, Mr.Curtis giving me your honest opinion of Captain Huntly ?" He hesitated a moment, and then replied shortly, "He is my captain, sir." This evasive answer of course put an end to any further interrogation on my part, but it only set me thinking the more.
Curtis was not mistaken.

At about three o'clock the lookout man sung out that there was land to windward, and descried what seemed as if it might be a line of smoke in the north-east horizon.

At six, I went on deck with M.Letourneur and his son, and we could then distinctly make out the low group of the Bermudas, encircled by their formidable chain of breakers.
"There," said Andre Letourneur to me, as we stood gazing at the distant land, "there lies the enchanted Archipelago, sung by your poet Moore.
The exile Waller, too, as long ago as 1643, wrote an enthusiastic panegyric on the islands, and I have been told that at one time English ladies would wear no other bonnets than such as were made of the leaves of the Bermuda palm." "Yes," I replied, "the Bermudas were all the rage in the seventeenth century, although latterly they have fallen into comparative oblivion." "But let me tell you, M.Andre," interposed Curtis, who had as usual joined our party, "that although poets may rave, and be as enthusiastic as they like about these islands, sailors will tell a different tale.
The hidden reefs that lie in a semicircle about two or three leagues from shore make the attempt to land a very dangerous piece of business.
And another thing, I know.

Let the natives boast as they will about their splendid climate, they, are visited by the most frightful hurricanes.