se we must have foundered long since!

The gale continued without abatement all that day and the next, the
second since our mishap, when, late in the afternoon the wind began to
go down, veering from the north-west to the north, and so on, back to
the eastern quadrant.

Soon after this, just before it got dark, an English man-of-war hove in
sight, and, seeing our disabled condition, signalled to ask whether we
required any assistance.

Through the clumsiness of Mr Spokeshave, who had charge of our signal
department and showed his cleverness by hoisting the very numbers of the
flags giving the skipper's reply, that, though our engines were
temporarily broken-down, they were fast being repaired, the captain of
the man-of-war could not understand him; and so, fearing the worst,
ranged up under our stern to see what help he could render, in what he
evidently considered, from Spokeshave's "hoist," to be a pressing
emergency.

"Ship ahoy!" he shouted through a speaking trumpet from his quarter-deck
aft, which was on a level with our bridge, the vessel, a splendid
cruiser of the first-class, towering over the comparatively puny
dimensions of the poor, broken-down _Star of the North_. "Shall I send
a boat aboard with assistance?"

"No, thank you very much," replied our skipper, taking off his cap and
returning the greeting of the naval officer. "We've got over the worst
of it now, sir, and will be soon under weigh again, as the weather is
breaking."

"Glad to hear it," returned the other, who could read our name astern as
she lay athwart us. "Where are you bound to?"

"New York, sir," sang out the skipper. "Twelve days out from England.
We've been disabled forty-eight hours."

"Hope your engines will soon be in working order," sang out the handsome
officer from the deck of the man-of-war, giving some other order at the
same minute, for I heard the shrill sound of a boatswain's pipe and the
rattle of feet along her deck. "Please report us when you reach your
destination."

"What name, sir?"

"Her Majesty's ship _Aurora_, on passage from Bermuda to Halifax."

With that he waved his hand, and her white ensign, whose blood-red cross
of Saint George stood out in bold relief, dipped in parting salute to
our vessel, which reciprocated the compliment as the man-of-war bore
away on her course to the northward, a group of officers rollicking
round their captain on her deck aft and gazing at us as she moved off
rapidly