yet, Mistress Pretty-bones. But as I was saying, take the whole coast along, I know it as well as the way from here to the Bold Dragoon; and a devil of an acquaintance is that Bay of Biscay. Whew! I wish you could but hear the wind blow there. It sometimes takes two to hold one man's hair on his head. Scudding through the Bay is pretty much the same thing as travelling the roads in this country, up one side of a mountain, and down the other."
"Do tell!" exclaimed Remarkable; "and does the sea run as high as mountains, Benjamin?"
"Well, I will tell; but first let's taste the grog. Hem! its the right kind of stuff, I must say, that you keeps in this country; but then you're so close aboard the West-Indees, you make but a small run of it. By the lord Harry, woman, if Garnsey only lay some where between Cape Hatteras and the Bite of Logann, but you'd see rum cheap! As to the seas, they runs more in lippers in the Bay of Biscay, unless it may be in a sow-wester, when they tumble about quite handsomely; thof its not in the narrow seas that you are to look for a swell; just go off the Western-Islands, in a westerly blow, keeping the land on your larboard hand, with the ship's head to the southward, and bring to, under a close-reef'd topsail; or mayhap a reef'd foresail, with a fore-topmast-staysail; arid mizzen-staysail, to keep her up to the sea, if she will bear it; and lay there for the matter of two watches, if you want to see, mountains. Why, good woman, I've been off there in the Boadishey frigate, when you could see nothing but some such matter as a piece of sky, mayhap, as big as the mainsail; and then again, there was a hole under your lee-quarter, big enough to hold the whole British navy."
