eir wisest plan will be to
settle down and behave themselves. Now I am going to shift the helm.
Haul up to Nor'-Nor'-East, and take a pull upon the lee braces."

During the ensuing six days we made excellent progress, the brigantine
revealing a quite unexpected and most welcome turn of speed, which
carried us to Port Louis exactly a week after I had boarded her. We
remained there four days, to enable me to dispatch a cablegram home and
receive a reply; after which, having meanwhile laid in a good supply of
fruit and a little fresh meat, we sailed again, shaping a course for
Maurissa Strait.

For the four days following our departure from Port Louis we did well;
then the breeze lessened in strength, became baffling, and finally died
away altogether, leaving us helplessly becalmed, except when for a few
minutes at a time some vagrant draught of air would come stealing along
the glassy surface of the sea, imparting to it an evanescent tint of
delicate blue; and then there would be a call upon the watch to man the
braces and trim the yards to meet the transient breathing, to the
muttered disgust of the men, who could see no advantage in labour that
resulted, in many cases, in moving the ship only to the extent of a few
fathoms. But it had to be done, for we were on the border-line between
the prevailing westerly winds of the Southern Ocean and the south-east
Trades, and to get into the latter the ship had to be jockeyed across
the intervening belt of calms. A curious fact in connection with this
time of trial to our patience--and it was a fact that caused me some
anxious speculation--was that the two men, Svorenssen and Van Ryn, who,
at the outset of my connection with them, seemed most likely to be a
source of trouble, were the two who grumbled least at the continual
calls to the braces.

It was on the afternoon of the fourth of these trying days that, as we
lay becalmed in the middle of a glass-smooth sea, the polished surface
became touched here and there with faint, evanescent patches of softest
turquoise-blue, appearing for a moment and then vanishing again. They
were the "cats-paws" that indicated a momentary stir in the stagnant
air, and the appearances of which were always greeted by the foremast
hands with execrations, for they meant "box-hauling" the yards--work for
what they regarded as a ludicrously inadequate result. But on this
occasion the cats-paws, instead of enduring for a few seconds and then
bei