ase,
our possessing the ability to sail straight in the teeth of the north-
east trade wind, and, in the second case, that we took no account of the
influence of the equatorial current, the stream of which setting
westwards into the Caribbean Sea, would have drifted as so far to
leeward that at the end of the day's run we must have been pretty nearly
where we started from, any progress we made ahead being neutralised by
the action of the stream carrying us in a lateral direction.

For these reasons, all navigators up to their work, when making the
passage home from the West Indies and _vice versa_, instead of fighting
against the forces of nature as some old seamen of the past used to do,
now make both winds and tides run harmoniously in their favour by
meeting them half-way, so to speak. Captain Miles, in our instance,
therefore, did not wear out his crew by trying to beat to windward in
order to get to the open Atlantic immediately. On the contrary, he kept
his vessel well away to leeward, shaping a course for Saint
Christopher's, so as to pass afterwards through the Anegada Channel,
between the Virgin Islands, and reach the ocean in that way. In other
words, following the example of the ready-witted Irishman who drove an
obstinate pig to market by pulling him back by the tail, he deliberately
steered to the north-west while really wanting to go to the north-east.
But, circuitous as such a route looked, the captain was in the end a
gainer by it; for, not only did he keep the wind well abeam of the ship
all the way on the starboard tack, but he had the additional advantage
of having the strong north-westerly current in his favour in lieu of
trying to work against it.

During this portion of our voyage the weather was beautifully fine, the
sky being of a clear transparent opal tint without a cloud and the sea
of the purest ultramarine blue, with little merry dancing wavelets
occasionally flecking its changing surface into foam.

The air, too, was balmy, and not unpleasantly warm, a fine healthy
breeze blowing, which filled our good ship's sails, so that they
expanded to the furthest limits of the bolt-ropes, speeding her on her
way at the rate of some eight knots an hour, as rising and falling she
surged through the sparkling water and left a foaming wake astern that
spread out in the shape of a fan behind her track, widening until it was
lost in the distance.

When I mentioned my going to visit the _Josephine_ a