redit to themselves
for their foresight believed that there was big money to be made in the
sailing passenger trade. Needless to say, the competition between the
different lines was exceedingly keen: but the owners of the "Queen" line
were a very rich corporation; they were prepared to sink money in the
effort to secure a monopoly; and the _Zenobia_ was the latest outcome of
their rather speculative policy.

At the moment when this story opens--namely, about two bells of the
middle watch, on the night of 24 January, 1862--or rather in the early
morning of 25 January, to be exact--the barque was somewhere about
latitude 25 degrees south, and longitude 27 degrees west. I have not
the precise figures by me, nor do they very greatly matter. The night
was fine, clear, and starlit, with the moon, well advanced in her fourth
quarter, hanging a few degrees above the eastern horizon, and shedding
just enough light to touch the wave crests immediately beneath her with
soft flashes of ruddy golden light. The wind was piping up fresh from
the south-east, and the little clipper was roaring through it under all
plain sail to her royals, with the yeast slopping in over her starboard
rail at every lee roll and her lee scuppers all afloat; for quick
passages were the order of the day, quick passages meant "carrying on",
and Mr Stephen Bligh, the chief mate and officer of the watch, was
living fully up to the traditions of the service. This was the
_Zenobia's_ second outward voyage. Her first trip had been accomplished
in the unprecedentedly brief period of forty-six days; and it was now
the ambition of her skipper and his two mates to beat even that
brilliant record. And at the moment there seemed an excellent prospect
that this laudable ambition might be achieved, for the morrow would only
be our twenty-fourth day out. We had been extraordinarily lucky in the
matter of crossing the line, having slid across it with a good breeze,
which had run us into the south-east Trades without the loss of a
moment; and those same south-east Trades--or something remarkably like
them--were still piping up fresh, although we were by this time well
beyond their ordinary southern limits.

Our ship's company amounted to twenty-four all told, namely, Captain
John Roberts, our skipper; Mr Stephen Bligh, our chief mate; Mr Peter
Johnson, our second mate; Dr John Morrison, our surgeon--ours being one
of the few ships in the trade which at that time c