as past us, her crew hauled down a couple of reefs in
her mainsail, and set a smaller jib. This, of course, relieved her very
materially, and, if anything, rather increased than diminished her
speed, as she kept sailing round and round us with ease, until we were
well over towards Weymouth Roads once more, and it had become perfectly
evident that we needed no looking after.

As soon as he was quite satisfied of this, Lord--made the best of his
way to the anchorage, and brought up, having had such a dusting as ought
to have satisfied him for some time to come.

As for Bob and myself, we were as pleased with our novel boat as it was
possible to be. She proved to be a perfect success in every way; and
when we took the tubes to pieces to stow them away, we found, so
accurately had the joints been made, that not a drop of water had
penetrated to the interior of either.

One alteration, however, we resolved to make, and that was in the size
of the sails. The boat was stiff enough to carry much larger sails than
we had provided for her; and as we did not know but that a time _might_
come when speed would be a matter of the most vital importance to us, we
determined to furnish her with sails as large as it was prudent to
carry.

We also decided to alter her rig somewhat, by substituting what is known
among the initiated as a "sliding-gunter" for a gaff-mainsail. This
gives you a mainsail and jib-headed topsail in one, whilst it does away
with the gaff altogether, whereby you obtain a much flatter standing
sail; indeed, when this sail is properly cut (and it is not a difficult
sail to shape), there is nothing to beat it in this respect.

Accordingly, we despatched an order to Lapthorn that night for the new
suit of sails, and also for a balloon-topsail for the _Water Lily_, the
dimensions of which satisfied even Bob, greedy as he was for canvas.

Meantime, the remainder of our stores were ordered, received, and
shipped, and ten days after our arrival in Weymouth Roads we had
everything on board which we could think of as necessary or likely to be
in any degree useful to us on our voyage.

But when all was shipped, we found we had made a mistake somewhere in
our calculations, and not only had rather more room than we expected,
but our little craft still floated rather higher than her regular load-
line. We therefore took in half a ton more lead ballast, which brought
her down to within an inch of her proper trim, and