he peak, and if one wanted to shorten sail after the enormous
labour of reefing the mainsail (which no man could do alone) one had to
change jibs forward and put up a storm sail--under which (by the way)
she was harder to put round than ever.

Did she leak? No, I think not. It is a pious opinion. I think she was
tight under the composition, but above that and between wind and water
she positively showed daylight. She was a basket. Glory be to God that
such a boat should swim at all!

But she drew little water? The devil she did! There was a legend in the
yard where she was built that she drew five feet four, but on a close
examination of her (on the third time she was wrecked), I calculated
with my companion that she drew little if anything under six feet. All
this I say knowing well that I shall soon put her up for sale; but that
is neither here nor there. I shall not divulge her name.

So we put to sea, intending to run to Harwich. There was a strong flood
down the coast, and the wind was to the north of north-east. But the
wind was with the tide--to that you owe the lives of the two men and the
lection of this delightful story; for had the tide been against the wind
and the water steep and mutinous, you would never have seen either of us
again: indeed we should have trembled out of sight for ever.

The wind was with the tide, and in a following lump of a sea, without
combers and with a rising glass, we valorously set out, and, missing the
South Pier by four inches, we occupied the deep.

For one short half-hour things went more or less well. I noted a white
horse or two to windward, but my companion said it was only the sea
breaking over the outer sands. She plunged a lot, but I flattered myself
she was carrying Caesar, and thought it no great harm. We had started
without food, meaning to cook a breakfast when we were well outside: but
men's plans are on the knees of the gods. The god called AEolus, that
blows from the north-east of the world (you may see him on old maps--it
is a pity they don't put him on the modern), said to his friends: "I see
a little boat. It is long since I sank one"; and altogether they gave
chase, like Imperialists, to destroy what was infinitely weak.

I looked to windward and saw the sea tumbling, and a great number of
white waves. My heart was still so high that I gave them the names of
the waves in the eighteenth _Iliad_: The long-haired wave, the graceful
wave, the wave that breaks