.
He rubbed his hands and chuckled greeting to us, and took up his
reminiscences.

"In '51, on this same stretch, Miss West, the _Flying Cloud_, in twenty-
four hours, logged three hundred and seventy-four miles under her
topgallant-sails. That was sailing. She broke the record, that day, for
sail an' steam."

"And what are we averaging, Mr. Pike?" Margaret queried, while her eyes
were fixed on the main deck, where continually one rail and then the
other dipped under the ocean and filled across from rail to rail, only to
spill out and take in on the next roll.

"Thirteen for a fair average since five o'clock yesterday afternoon," he
exulted. "In the squalls she makes all of sixteen, which is going some,
for the _Elsinore_."

"I'd take the crojack off if I had charge," Margaret criticised.

"So would I, so would I, Miss West," he replied; "if we hadn't been six
weeks already off the Horn."

She ran her eyes aloft, spar by spar, past the spars of hollow steel to
the wooden royals, which bent in the gusts like bows in some invisible
archer's hands.

"They're remarkably good sticks of timber," was her comment.

"Well may you say it, Miss West," he agreed. "I'd never a-believed
they'd a-stood it myself. But just look at 'm! Just look at 'm!"

There was no breakfast for the men. Three times the galley had been
washed out, and the men, in the forecastle awash, contented themselves
with hard tack and cold salt horse. Aft, with us, the steward scalded
himself twice ere he succeeded in making coffee over a kerosene-burner.

At noon we picked up a ship ahead, a lime-juicer, travelling in the same
direction, under lower-topsails and one upper-topsail. The only one of
her courses set was the foresail.

"The way that skipper's carryin' on is shocking," Mr. Pike sneered. "He
should be more cautious, and remember God, the owners, the underwriters,
and the Board of Trade."

Such was our speed that in almost no time we were up with the stranger
vessel and passing her. Mr. Pike was like a boy just loosed from school.
He altered our course so that we passed her a hundred yards away. She
was a gallant sight, but, such was our speed, she appeared standing
still. Mr. Pike jumped upon the rail and insulted those on her poop by
extending a rope's end in invitation to take a tow.

Margaret shook her head privily to me as she gazed at our bending royal-
yards, but was caught in the act by Mr. Pike, who cried out:

"