upplies of wood, water, and provisions, and from
the last of which mariners shaped a due west course before the trade-
winds. But, as already hinted, George Saint Leger was a young man of
somewhat original ideas, and geography was one of his favourite studies.
He knew that the direct course from the chops of the channel, was, as
nearly as might be, south-west; therefore he determined to steer a
south-westerly course whenever the wind would permit, instead of
following the usual long route via the Azores and the Cape Verde
islands; but with the assistance of a roughly made globe he had also
puzzled out the fact, not then generally recognised, that in the
latitude of sixty degrees a degree of longitude was only about half the
length of the same degree at the equator, therefore he also determined
to make as much westing as possible at the very outset of his voyage.
And this he was able to do with very satisfactory results, for the light
southerly air which had sprung up and met him when he towed his ship out
of Plymouth Sound not only freshened up into a brisk breeze of such
strength that he could only show "topgallants"--as they were then
called--to it by rather bold "carrying-on," but it lasted a full week,
during which the reckoning showed that the ship--which proved to be
amazingly fast--had sailed a distance of fully twelve hundred miles, or
more than half the distance between England and Newfoundland. Then a
westerly gale sprang up, which lasted nine days, during which the
_Nonsuch_, under close-reefed canvas, drove southward to the latitude of
Madeira, where the ship encountered calms and light variable winds for
five days before falling in with the trade-winds; after which the
troubles of the voyagers were over. For thereupon ensued not only a
constant fair wind, but also fine weather, so that the ship sailed on
day after day over a sparkling, gently heaving sea of deepest blue
tipped with tiny creaming foam-caps out of which leaped those marine
marvels the flying-fish in countless shoals as the bows clove the
roaring surges, while overhead the sky daily assumed a deeper, richer
tint of sapphire, out of which the sun, scarcely veiled by the solemn
drifting trade-clouds, shot his beams with ever-increasing ardour.

And then, at dawn of the thirty-first day after their departure from
Plymouth, there was sighted, on the extreme verge of the western
horizon, a small wedge-like shape of filmy grey which Dyer, the pilo