, longitude 26 degrees
30' W., I spoke the ship _North Star_ of London. The great ship was
out forty-eight days from Norfolk, Virginia, and was bound for Rio,
where we met again about two months later. The _Spray_ was now thirty
days from Gibraltar.

The _Spray's_ next companion of the voyage was a swordfish, that swam
alongside, showing its tall fin out of the water, till I made a stir
for my harpoon, when it hauled its black flag down and disappeared.
September 30, at half-past eleven in the morning, the _Spray_ crossed
the equator in longitude 29 degrees 30' W. At noon she was two miles
south of the line. The southeast trade-winds, met, rather light, in
about 4 degrees N., gave her sails now a stiff full sending her
handsomely over the sea toward the coast of Brazil, where on October
5, just north of Olinda Point, without further incident, she made the
land, casting anchor in Pernambuco harbor about noon: forty days from
Gibraltar, and all well on board. Did I tire of the voyage in all that
time? Not a bit of it! I was never in better trim in all my life, and
was eager for the more perilous experience of rounding the Horn.

It was not at all strange in a life common to sailors that, having
already crossed the Atlantic twice and being now half-way from Boston
to the Horn, I should find myself still among friends. My
determination to sail westward from Gibraltar not only enabled me to
escape the pirates of the Red Sea, but, in bringing me to Pernambuco,
landed me on familiar shores. I had made many voyages to this and
other ports in Brazil. In 1893 I was employed as master to take the
famous Ericsson ship _Destroyer_ from New York to Brazil to go against
the rebel Mello and his party. The _Destroyer_, by the way, carried a
submarine cannon of enormous length.

In the same expedition went the _Nictheroy_, the ship purchased by the
United States government during the Spanish war and renamed the
_Buffalo_. The _Destroyer_ was in many ways the better ship of the
two, but the Brazilians in their curious war sank her themselves at
Bahia. With her sank my hope of recovering wages due me; still, I
could but try to recover, for to me it meant a great deal. But now
within two years the whirligig of time had brought the Mello party
into power, and although it was the legal government which had
employed me, the so-called "rebels" felt under less obligation to me
than I could have wished.

During these visits to Brazil I had m