tell him so,
Mr Gilham informed me that we had suffered no serious damage beyond the
injury to the topsail yard.

This, he said, too, was much less than Mr Cleete, the carpenter, had
made out, that worthy being one of the sort of men who always take a
despondent view of everything.

The spar, however, was sent down and replaced by a spare yard which we
carried; and everything was all right aloft now.

We had lost something in another way, though; for, when Mr Quadrant
took the sun at noon, with all of us youngsters standing round him with
our sextants, like a parcel of chickens gathered about an old hen, which
indeed the master greatly resembled with his shock head of hair and
fussy manner, the ship was found to be in latitude 44 degrees 5 minutes
north and longitude 7 degrees 50 minutes west.

She had been driven to the south-east by the gale, aided by the drift of
the current setting in to the Bay of Biscay.

This was more than two hundred miles out of our proper track, and far
too much to the eastward to be able to weather the northern extremity of
the Spanish coast, which would soon be perilously near to us, running as
we then were to the sou'-sou'-west.

Fortunately for us, though, the wind had now veered to the southward;
and, as we were sailing on the port tack, by giving the ship a good deal
of weather helm and bracing round the yards, we were able to bear up to
the westward out of the ill-omened bay, steering west by south until we
were in longitude 11 degrees 10 minutes west and well clear of Cape
Finisterre, when we hauled our wind and shaped a course direct for
Madeira.

This, however, was not until next day; and, I recollect, after we luffed
up again and bore to the southward, a lot of talk went on in the gunroom
at dinner-time about the probability of our stopping or not at that
beautiful island, the gem of the Atlantic.

"I say, Jack Vernon," sang out Larkyns to me, across the table, "I
suppose you know why it is called Madeira?"

"No," I replied. "Why?"

"Well," he began, "it is rather a romantic story--"

"Then, I shouldn't think it can be much in your line," interrupted Mr
Stormcock, who somehow or other was always down upon any chap for ever
starting a yarn. "You tell very practical ones; only, instead of the
term `story' I would use a shorter and more expressive word."

"Say `lie' if you like; I know you mean it," rejoined Larkyns, in no way
put out by the rude insinuation and conti