tell of
the encounter. It would be difficult to say whether astonishment or
delight was the feeling that predominated in the breasts of all hands of
us, fore and aft, as we stood watching the really marvellous performance
of the little clipper while beating out of harbour. It was not her
speed only--although that seemed phenomenal, for she swept past every
other craft that was going our way as though they had been at anchor;
her weatherliness astounded us quite as much as did her speed, for she
looked up a good three points higher than did our square-rigged
neighbours, while her oil-smooth wake trailed away astern as straight as
a ruled line, with no apparent inclination to trend a hairbreadth
towards her weather quarter. She seemed to make no leeway at all!

"Well!" exclaimed Henderson, who was standing by me, close abaft the
weather main rigging, watching--as I was--the rapid sliding past us of
the various objects ashore, "I've heard people speak of a ship as
sailin' like a witch, but I'm only now comin' to rightly understand just
exactly what that expression means; it means goin' along precisely as if
you was shot out of a gun! Why, Mr Delamere, I don't believe as
there's anything afloat that can touch us--not, at all events, in
moderately smooth water. What we shall do in a heavy sea remains to be
seen; and we shall soon find that out, I reckon, for it's all foamin'
white away out there in the offing; but I've a notion that she'll go
over it all like a duck, provided that we don't drive her too hard.
Look at that, sir,"--as the schooner leapt from the crest of a sea into
the hollow beyond, and the foam buzzed and boiled to the level of her
lee head-rail and then went glancing away dizzily aft--"ain't that just
perfectly beautiful? Never shipped a drop, she didn't! And there
again! My eyes! but she _is_ a beauty, and no mistake."

"She is certainly behaving wonderfully well," I admitted, my voice all
a-quiver with pride. "How does she steer? Is she easy on her helm?" I
demanded of the man at the wheel.

"Gripes just the leastest bit in the world, sir, but nothin' worth
speakin' about. I could steer her wi' one hand," answered the man; and
to prove his words he placed one hand behind him and kept it there for a
minute or two while he grasped a spoke of the wheel with the other.

We had by this time brought the Beacon shoal about one point abaft the
weather-beam, and I was of opinion that we could weath