didn't spare her an
ounce. We kept her slap on her course, neither luffing up nor bearing
away for anything. That was the sort of weather when the ugliness of
the old cutter's lines was forgotten, and one saw only beauties in
them. She might send the spindrift squirting through her cross-trees,
but with the chap at the helm keeping her well a-going, she'd smoke
through bad dirt like a steamer.

We rose the low cliffs of Eastern Minorca about half-way across; but
rain came on directly afterwards, and in the thickness we lost them
again. In that odd way in which things one has glanced through in a
book recur to one when they are wanted, I had managed to recall
something I had once conned over in a Sailing Directions about
Ciudadella. The harbour entrance was narrow--scarcely a cable's length
across--and it was marked by a lighthouse on the northern side, and a
castle or tower or something of that kind on the other bank. The town
behind, with its heavy walls and white houses, was plainly visible from
seaward, and the spire of the principal church was somehow used as a
leading mark. But whether one had to keep it on the lighthouse or the
castle, I could not recollect. Neither could I call to mind whether
there was a bar. In fact, I could not remember a single thing else
about the place; and as Haigh remarked, what little I did recall
(without being in any way certain about its accuracy) was of singularly
little practical use. But this ignorance did not deter us from holding
on towards the coast in the very least. We might pile up the cutter on
some outlying reef, but we were both cocksure that our stupendous luck
was going to set us safe ashore somehow. _Et apres_--the Recipe.

We held on sturdily, lifting slant-wise over the heavy green rollers
till we were within half a mile of the land, and could see the surf
creaming to the heads of the low cliffs, and could hear the moaning and
booming as it broke on rocky outliers; and then easing off sheets
again, we put up helm and ran down parallel with the coast. Being
blissfully ignorant of anything beyond a general idea of Minorca's
outlines, we had to keep a very wary lookout; for a heavy rain had
started to drive down with the gale, and looking to windward was like
peering through a dirty cambric pocket-handkerchief. Indeed, we made
two several attempts at knocking the island out of the water, each
sufficiently distinct to have made any ordinary sailorman in his sane
senses