s she can!
Let her run a hundred miles or so more south, and then we'll fetch up to
the Horn, and be able to spin along like winking, just as the beautiful
creature wants!'

"Well! it did make us mad to hear the old man talk like this about the
clumsy old tub; but of course we couldn't help ourselves, so we only
grinned, and said to each other,--`Catch us coming again in the _Cranky
Jane_ when once we're safe ashore!'

"Would you believe it? The blessed brig, although the new course she
was on brought the wind aft instead of on her beam, she was that
spiteful over it, that, as it was blowing much stronger than it had
been, it took two of us to keep her head from deviating from her proper
track, and we had hard work to prevent her from breaking off more than
she did.

"The wind came on towards the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and
by nightfall--you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in
those latitudes--we had to shorten sail so much that the _Cranky Jane_
was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with
reefed top-sails and jib and main-sail besides the stay-sails.

"The weather got wilder and wilder as time went on, the heavens quite
dark overhead, except an occasional glint of a star which didn't know
whether he ought to show or not; but still, although we were pretty far
below the equator, the night was warm and even sultry, so that we
expected a hurricane, or cyclone, or something of that sort, for it was
quite unnatural to feel as if in the tropics when fifty degrees south!

"The cap'en, I know, thought it would blow by and by, for before he
turned in he caused even the reefed top-sails and stay-sails to be taken
in, and left her snug for the night, with only a close-reefed main-sail
and the jib on her.

"`Keep a good look-out, Mr Stanchion,' says he to the chief officer, as
he went down the companion-ladder to his cabin, `and call me if there's
the slightest change.'

"`Ay, ay, sir,' says Mr Stanchion; and so the skipper goes below with a
cheerful good-night, in spite of the weather looking dirty and squalls
being handy before morning.

"Now, as luck would have it--as some folks say, although others put it
down to something more than luck--Mr Stanchion wasn't like one of those
jolly, devil-may-care, slap-dash sort of officers, that your regular
shell-backs like best. He was a silent, quiet, reflective man, who
looked and spoke as if butter wouldn't melt in his mo