little interlude over, the captain proceeded with his explanation.

"Yes," said he, "we're now in latitude 44 degrees 56 minutes north, and
longitude 9 degrees 42 minutes west; so that we've run pretty close on
four hundred miles since yesterday at noon. Just think of that, now!"

"A pretty good distance," said Mr Meldrum; "but, you must recollect we
had the gale to drive us on."

"Aye, sorr," said Mr McCarthy, joining in the conversation, "and didn't
it droive us too! Begorrah, there was some times that the wind tuck the
ship clane out of the wather and carried us along in the air like one of
them flying-fish you'll say when we gits down to the line!"

"It was fortunate it was in our favour," observed the captain
reflectively. "We couldn't have tried to beat against it; and, heavily-
laden as we are, it would have been madness to have tried to lay-to!"

"You're right," said Mr Meldrum, "and it was equally fortunate that the
gale carried us so far and no further! Another twelve hours of it and
we would have been high and dry ashore on the Spanish coast."

"I think you're not far out," replied the captain, scratching his head
and pondering over the matter, "for we'll only just shave past Cape
Finisterre now keeping our course; and if we hadn't made so much westing
when we got out of the Channel I don't know where we should have been!"

"Faix and it was grumbling at it you were all the toime, cap'en!" said
McCarthy with a knowing wink; "though you do now say it was all for the
best, as the man said when they buried his wife's grandmother!"

"Aye, you're right," said Captain Dinks more seriously, "all is for the
best, if we could only know it at the time!"

Thenceforward, the weather kept fine; and the fates seemed favourable to
the _Nancy Bell_ in her pilgrimage across the sea.

There was no lack of incident in the voyage, however.

One day, about a week after they had bidden farewell to the Bay of
Biscay with all its terrors and troubled waters, as the ship was
approaching that region of calms which lies adjacent to the Tropic of
Cancer, her rate of progression had grown so "small by degrees and
beautifully less," that she barely drifted southward with the current,
until at length she came to a dead stop, so far as those on board could
judge, lying motionless on the surface of the water "like a painted ship
upon a painted ocean," as the situation is described in Coleridge's
_Ancient Mariner_.

Round abou