Dan in a few minutes forgot his fears and lost even his sense of uneasiness as he found the boat mounted wave after wave without shipping water.

Several times, indeed, a shower of spray flew high up in the air, but the gusts no longer buried her so that the water came over the gunwale, and it was a long time before there was any occasion to use the baler.

As the sun set it could be seen that there was a dark line between it and the water.
"There is the land, Dan; and I do not suppose it is more than twenty miles away, for most of the coast lies low." "But how we find de York River, massa?
Will de compass tell you dat ?" "No, Dan.

I don't know whether we have drifted north or south of it.

At ordinary times the current runs up the coast, but the wind this morning was blowing from the north of west, and may have been doing so all through the night for anything I know.