Squire used to send me to Boston--(the Dash
was the only craft in the trade then)--with little things to sell, and
a return cargo of flour, gin, tobacco, and such like Yankee notions,
which the Nova Scotians must have, and upon which her Majesty lavished
most ungracious duties, to fetch home. Well, the Squire lived at the
town of Annapolis, twenty miles up a river, where Digby, at its
entrance, was the only port of entry within a hundred miles. Seeing
that I liked to make quick trips, it was not always convenient to stop
at this obdurate port of entry, and so I used to lay the Dash's head
for a piece of dark wood on a point of land outside the entrance
(always being careful to have a clearance in _merchandise_) and run
her close aboard of it. Squire had a cousin living near that bit of
wood, who used to understand the thing, and could sight the Dash's
signal ten miles at sea. Lying off and on until sundown, the Squire's
cousin would hang out a light on a tree; if at the top it was the
signal--'All right;' if half-mast, 'Keep out!' 'There's the light--all
right to-night! the boys used to say, when it gleamed at the tree
top.
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