; but you comes along and gets aboard of us eight hunderd mile
away, and--says you--`we'll sight Saint Paul as we runs down our
eastin''; and, although we've been headin' all round the compass since
then, there's the hiland, right enough, and just where you said it would
be, ay, to the very hinch."

I was vastly tickled at the man's enthusiastic admiration of my little
twopenny-halfpenny feat of navigation, and--secretly--very proud of it
myself; but, of course, in reality it was an exceedingly commonplace
exploit, which any other navigator worthy of being so-called could have
accomplished without the slightest difficulty, the only essentials to
success being good instruments, clear skies, and correct arithmetic, all
of which I fortunately possessed. But I was nevertheless highly elated
at my success, chiefly, I think, because, it being my first independent
attempt to navigate a ship, I had demonstrated to myself my ability to
do so.

The day now grew fast in the east; the primrose hue softened away, right
and left, into a tint of warm grey with a faint suggestion of rose in
it; the stars had all vanished save one solitary gem that hung low in
the western sky like a silver lamp; the zenith was a rich, pure
ultramarine, that was fast spreading toward the western horizon and
chasing the last lingering shadow of night before it. Great spokes of
radiant light were darting aloft from behind the island and touching
into gold a few small, scattered flakes of fleecy cloud that floated
high over our mastheads. Then, all in a moment, the small, faintly-
gleaming bit of land ahead became transformed, as it might be with a
magician's wand, into a block of deepest, richest purple, bristling with
rays of burning gold, a throbbing rim of molten gold swept into view
from behind it, and in an instant it vanished amid a blinding blaze of
sunlight that flashed across the ocean toward us, transfiguring its
erstwhile surface of ebony into a tremble of turquoise and gold,
outlining every spar and sail and rope in the ship with thin, golden
wires, and causing every bit of glass and polished metal-work to blaze
and scintillate with golden fire. The watch appeared, yawning and
stretching as they emerged from their hiding places, blinking like owls
as they stared over the bows endeavouring to pick out from the dazzle
ahead the shape of land that the lookout was pointing to; and the
carpenter emerged from his reverie to shout:

"Rig the he