ove the log from the
time of our clearing the Bristol Channel--we had reached the meridian of
12 degrees 15 minutes west; for Captain Billings wisely took advantage
of such a favourable breeze, as I've remarked before, to get well to
windward of the French coast, knowing well that we might shortly meet
with westerly winds of a variable nature that would probably put us
quite as far to the eastward as we should want--in the event of our
making too much westing.

However, having now gained such a good offing, we hauled our wind, and
steered a west-sou'-west course, as previously mentioned, towards
Madeira.

Up to this time we had not started a brace, or loosed a sheet, the wind
being fair from aft while we were steering to the west, and now well
abeam, on our bearing up to the southward on the port tack; but, we had
hardly made a couple of days' sail in our new direction, running down to
the parallel of 45 degrees north, which we crossed in 15 degrees west,
before the wind began to come in light puffs. Shortly afterwards, it
shifted round to the westward, backing occasionally to the east and
south-east and causing us plenty of work in the way of tacking, first to
starboard, and then to port again--the skipper striving all the while to
keep all the westing he had made, and preserve a diagonal course for the
Line; although the set of the Gulf Stream, in towards the coast of
Portugal, gave us a lot of leeway to add to our dead reckoning.

What with the baffling breezes and occasional calms, it took us another
four days to get to the southwards of the Azores, passing them much
further to the eastwards than Captain Billings had calculated on; but
then a fresh wind sprang up from the north-west, bidding fair to last,
which took us down to the thirty-fifth parallel in fine style, the
_Esmeralda_ covering over three hundred miles between the morning of one
day and noon the next.

All hands now began hoping we were going to make a quick run of it after
all, in spite of the tedious delays of the last few days; but it was a
very fallacious hope, as we quickly found out.

The favourable north-wester lasted another twelve hours, driving us down
our latitudes on the starboard tack, the ship sailing pretty free, with
the wind nearly abeam and all her canvas set that could draw, racing
through the water like a crack cutter at a regatta; when, on the evening
of our eleventh day out, by which time we had nearly reached the
parallel