ious day when she hauled out from the Channel.

The breeze was freshening, and there was a nasty sort of chopping sea,
when the captain came on the poop at noon to take the sun, in order to
ascertain his longitude--an operation which would have been much more
difficult in the hazy weather that had prevailed some few hours
previous, with the zenith every now and then overcast by the fleecy
storm wrack and flying scud that came drifting across the sky as the
wind veered; but the ship was making good running, and everything bade
fair for her soon crossing the boisterous Bay of Biscay, on whose
troubled waters she had now entered.

"She's slipping along!" said Captain Dinks to Adams, rubbing his hands
together gleefully, as he put down his sextant on the top of the saloon
skylight for a moment and gave a glance aloft and then over the side to
windward.

"Yes, sir," replied the second mate. "Going fine--eleven knots last
heave of the lead."

"Ah, nothing can beat her on a bowline!" said the captain triumphantly.
"She's a clipper and no mistake when she has the wind abeam: bears her
canvas well, too, for a little un!" he added, with another glance aloft,
where the sails could be seen distended to their utmost extent and
tugging at the bolt-ropes, while the topgallant-masts were bent almost
into a curve with the strain upon them and the stays aft were stretched
as tight as fiddle-strings.

"Yes, sir; she does," agreed Adams; "but, don't you think, sir, she's
carrying on too much now that the wind has got up? I was just going to
call the hands to take in sail when you came on deck."

"Certainly not," replied Captain Dinks, struck aghast by the very
suggestion of such a thing. "I won't have a stitch off her! Why, man
alive, you wouldn't want me to lose this breeze with such a lot of
leeway as we have to make up?"

"No, sir; but--"

"Hang your `buts'!" interrupted the captain with some heat. "You are a
bit too cautious, Adams. When you have sailed the _Nancy Bell_ as long
as I have you'll know what she's able to carry and what she isn't!"

With these pregnant words of wisdom, the captain resumed possession of
his sextant and proceeded to take the altitude of the sun, shouting out
occasional unintelligible directions the while through the skylight to
Mr McCarthy, who was in his cabin below, so that he might compare the
position of the solar orb with Greenwich time as marked by the
chronometer. Then telling Adams