association of illness and approaching death.

A stiff breeze was blowing now from the southward, and running, as we
were, to the northward, right before it, the skipper had ordered all our
square sails forward to be set so as to take every advantage of the
wind, in addition to our steam-power, the old barquey prancing away full
speed ahead, with her topsails and fore canvas bellied out to their
utmost extent, their leech lifting occasionally with a flicker as she
outran the breeze and the clew-gallant blocks rattling as the sheets
slackened and grew taut again, while the wind hummed through the canvas
aloft like a thousand bees buzzing about the rigging.

The black smoke, too, was rushing up the funnel and whirling in the air
overhead, uncertain which direction to take, from the speed of the
vessel inclining it to trail away aft, while the stiff southerly breeze
blew it forwards; so we carried it all along with us, hung up above our
dog vane like an awning as we careered onwards, raising a deep furrow of
swelling water on either side as we cut through the dancing sunlit
waves, and leaving a long white wake astern that shone through the blue,
far away behind in the distance, to where sea and sky melted into one,
far away on the horizon line.

Old Masters, the boatswain, was on the poop when the colonel and I came
up from below, in the very act of hauling in the patent log to ascertain
our speed.

"Well," said I, as he looked at the index of the ungainly thing, which
is something of a cross between a shark hook and a miniature screw
propeller. "What's she doing, bo'sun?"

"Doing? Wot she's a-doing on, sir?" he replied, repeating my own words
and mouthing them over with much gusto. "Why, sir, she's going sixteen
knots still, and the bloomin' old grampus has been keeping it up since
four bells. She carries the wind with her, too; for jist as we bore up
north awhile ago, astern the chase, I'm blessed if the breeze didn't
shift round likewise to the south'ard, keepin' astern of us as before!"

"Where is the chase?" I asked, not being able to see forwards on
account of the swelling foresail and other intervening objects. "I
suppose she's right ahead, eh?"

"No, sir. Jist come here alongside o' me at the taffrail," said he.
"Now foller my finger, sir. Look, there she is, two points off our
starboard bow. She was hull down jist now, but we're rising her fast,
sir. See, there she be right under the foreyard the