d with the
past and present, but hopeful for the future. At the same time, knowing
by his recent experience how hard a ship to beat was the _Southern
Cross_, he fully realised that he must neglect no means within his power
to secure to himself the victory. Nor did he. Had his life and fortune
both been staked on the result of the race, he could scarcely have
manifested more eagerness. Indeed, he rather overdid it, imperilling
his spars by carrying a heavy press of canvas up to the last moment
possible; which, as the north-east trades happened to be blowing rather
fresh, involved a great deal of clewing up, hauling down, furling, and
subsequently re-setting of his lighter sails, and a consequent amount of
extra work for the crew which was anything but to their taste.

A week passed thus; but on the seventh day following that on which the
_Southern Cross_ had been spoken, and within an hour or two of the time
when the skipper, having worked up his meridian altitude of the sun, had
expressed to his passengers a confident hope that they would have
crossed the line by the time that they retired that night, the wind
began to fail them, and by eight bells in the afternoon watch the ship
was lying motionless on a sea the surface of which was smooth as
polished glass, save for the undulations of the ground-swell which came
creeping up to them from the northward and eastward. The sky was hazy
but without a cloud, and the temperature of the motionless atmosphere
was almost unbearably oppressive, the pitch melting out of the deck-
seams and adhering to the shoe-soles even beneath the shelter of the
awning which was spread over the poop.

"Well, ladies and gentlemen," said Captain Blyth as he joined his
passengers at the dinner-table that evening, "here we are in the
Doldrums, fast enough, and no mistake. The nor'-east trades brought us
so close up to the line that I was in hopes they'd be accommodating
enough to carry us over it. However, we mustn't grumble. We're within
sixty miles of the Equator, whilst on my last outward voyage I was left
becalmed close upon two hundred miles to the nor'ard of it. And we're
not alone in our misery; I counted no less than fifteen sail in sight
from the deck just before dark, but I couldn't make out the _Cross_
among 'em. I am in hopes of getting a start across and into the south-
easters before she comes up."

"How far astern do you think she is just now, captain?" asked Mrs
Henderso