intermittent thunder of the bow wave as it leapt and roared, glassy
smooth, in a curling snow-crowned breaker from the sharp, shearing stem
at every wild plunge of it into the heart of an on-rushing wave. I ran
up the poop ladder, and stood to windward, a fathom back from the break
of the poop, where I could obtain the best possible view of the ship;
and I thought I had never before beheld so magnificent and perfect a
picture as she presented of triumphant, domineering strength and power,
and of reckless, breathless, yet untiring speed.

"Morning, Mr Conyers," shouted Murgatroyd, halting alongside me as I
stood gazing at the pallid blue sky across which great masses of cloud
were rapidly sweeping--to be outpaced by the low-flying shreds and
tatters of steamy scud--the opaque, muddy green waste of foaming,
leaping waters, and the flying ship swaying her broad spaces of
damp-darkened canvas, her tapering and buckling spars, and her
tautly-strained rigging in long arcs athwart the scurrying clouds as she
leapt and plunged and sheared her irresistible way onward in the midst
of a wild chaos and dizzying swirl and hurry of foaming spume: "what
think you of this for a grand morning, eh, sir? Is this breeze good
enough for you? And what's your opinion of the _City of Cawnpore_, now,
sir?"

"It is a magnificent morning for sailing, Mr Murgatroyd," I replied; "a
magnificent morning--that would be none the worse for an occasional
glint of sunshine, which, however, may come by and by; and, as for the
ship, she is a wonder, a perfect flyer--why, she must be reeling off her
thirteen knots at the least."

"You've hit it, sir, pretty closely; she was going thirteen and a half
when we hove the log at four bells, and she hasn't eased up anything
since," was the reply.

"Ah," said I, "that is grand sailing--with the wind where it is. But
you are driving her rather hard, aren't you? stretching the kinks out of
your new rigging, eh?"

"Well, perhaps we are," admitted the mate, with a short laugh, as he
glanced at the slender upper spars, that were whipping about like
fishing-rods. "But you know, Mr Conyers, we're _obliged_ to do it;
there is so much opposition nowadays, and people are in such a deuce of
a hurry always to get to the place that they are bound to, that the line
owning the fastest ships gets the most patronage; and there's the whole
thing in a nutshell."

"Just so; and it is all well enough, in its way--if you do