yes; but, on my stretching
out my hand to him, we made friends, and agreed to bury all the
disagreeable occurrences of the day in oblivion.

We had a lot of yarning together until midnight inside the deck-house,
where Tom Jerrold lay an his bunk snoring away, utterly regardless of
our presence; and then, on Mr Mackay's summoning me, by the captain's
order as he told me, to keep watch with him on the poop, I went up the
ladder and remained with him astern, watching the ship bowling along
under all plain sail, with the same buoyant breeze behind her with which
we had started.

"Now, Graham," said Mr Mackay at daybreak, when we were just off Saint
Catharine's Point in the Isle of Wight, as he informed me, "you can go
and turn in. Bosun, call the starboard watch!"

"Aye, aye, sorr," answered Tim Rooney from the bows, where he had been
keeping his vigils, too, like us aft. "Starbowlines, ahoy--!"

I only remained on the poop while the man at the wheel was being
relieved, and Mr Saunders, the second mate, came on deck to take Mr
Mackay's place; when, going below to the deck-house cabin, I was soon in
my little shelf of a bed, falling asleep more quickly, I think, than I
had ever done before; doing so, indeed, almost the instant I got within
the blankets.

The next day, at noon, we tore by the Start, and, later on, that noblest
monument a man could have, the Eddystone, Smeaton's glory; the ship
racing down Channel as if all the sea-nymphs were chasing us, and old
Neptune, too, at their heels to hurry them on, with his tritons after
him.

Our average speed all that day was a good ten knots, the wind never
shifting and every sail drawing fore and aft. Sometimes it was even
more, according to Tom Jerrold's calculations, he having to heave the
log at intervals and turn the fourteen-second glass, his especial duty,
in order to determine our rate of progress through the water; but I
don't think it was ever less from the time the sun rose in the morning.

At all events, the Silver Queen made such good use of her time that, at
six o'clock on this evening of our second day under sail, we were up to
the Lizard, the last bit of English shore we should see in a hurry; and
at "six bells" in the first watch, were speeding along some ten miles
south of the Bishop's Rock lightship in the Scilly Isles, really, at
last, at sea!

CHAPTER EIGHT.

A SUDDEN INTERRUPTION.

"Now, my boy," said Mr Mackay, who had the "first watch,"