Note 7 — Chapter III

This was not to be, however. For, a few months after, the capricious sea exhumed her once more, when the wreck was removed beyond and above high-water mark.

In the winter of 1860–61, in a storm, a new channel of sufficient depth for fishing-boats to pass out and in, opened in the beach, a short distance south of where the wreck lay. Through this channel the tide ebbed and flowed; and such was its effect on the currents that a cove or indentation was made in the beach nearly opposite the grave of the Sparrow-Hawk. This indentation became deeper and deeper, until at length the hull revisited the glimpses of the day. At the time of this writing, the channel and the cove have disappeared; in their place is a straight line of sea-beach, and there are ten feet of sand where the old vessel lay. But for this accidental opening and consequent abrasion of the beach, the vessel might, indeed, have remained “undiscovered for ages.”