ecial port to seek a cargo, but being part owner, could please
himself by going to the best market; which, being a shrewd man, with his
head screwed on straight, you can bet he did!--no matter where we wanted
to go, as I say, the wind seemed to favour us, for it was always right
astern, and everything set below and aloft, and the wind blowing us
there beautifully right before it all the way--just as the old _Jane_
liked it, sweet and not too strong!

"So far, going out to Australia, and looking in at Sydney and Fiji and
the islands for cargo, and loading up choke-full with just everything
that our skipper counted at the highest freight, with no dead weight to
break the brig's back--so far, everything went `high-falutin'' as the
Yanks say; but when we came to leave Polynesia--it ought to be
christened Magnesia, I consider, for it contains a bigger continent,
with a larger number of islands than Europe--and shape a course
homewards to the white cliffs of Old Albion, that we longed to see again
after our long absence, for we were away good two years in all, the
cap'en thinking nothing of time, being his own charterer, so long as he
got a good cargo from port to port, and we were engaged on a trading
voyage, and not merely out and home again directly--then it was that the
_Cranky Jane_ came out in her true colours, and made us love her--oh
yes! just as the skipper did--over the left!

"Why, sir, she was that aggravating, that, as Bill the boatswain and I
agreed, we should have liked to run her ashore on the very first land we
came to, beach her and chop her up there and then for firewood; and we
wouldn't have been content till we had burned up the very last fragment
of her obstinate old hull!

"After leaving Suva Suva Bay, Fiji, where we filled up the last
remaining space in the _Cranky Jane's_ hold with copra--which is a lot
of cocoa-nuts smashed up so as to stow easy, out of which they make oil
at home for moderator lamps--we went south further than I ever went
before in any ship. Captain Jiggins, as I heard him explaining to the
first officer when I was taking my trick at the wheel, and blessing the
brig as usual for her stiff helm, intended making the quickest passage
that ever was made, he said, by striking down into them outlandish
latitudes before he steered east and made the Horn; and I suppose he
knew what he was about, as he was as good a navigator as ever handled a
sextant. _He_ called it great circle sailing