on my voyage; for rollers were running heavily at
the time, and it was not practicable to make a landing. From Reunion I
shaped a course direct for Cape St. Mary, Madagascar.

The sloop was now drawing near the limits of the trade-wind, and the
strong breeze that had carried her with free sheets the many thousands
of miles from Sandy Cape, Australia, fell lighter each day until
October 30, when it was altogether calm, and a motionless sea held her
in a hushed world. I furled the sails at evening, sat down on deck,
and enjoyed the vast stillness of the night.

October 31 a light east-northeast breeze sprang up, and the sloop
passed Cape St. Mary about noon. On the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th of
November, in the Mozambique Channel, she experienced a hard gale of
wind from the southwest. Here the _Spray_ suffered as much as she did
anywhere, except off Cape Horn. The thunder and lightning preceding
this gale were very heavy. From this point until the sloop arrived off
the coast of Africa, she encountered a succession of gales of wind,
which drove her about in many directions, but on the 17th of November
she arrived at Port Natal.

This delightful place is the commercial center of the "Garden Colony,"
Durban itself, the city, being the continuation of a garden. The
signalman from the bluff station reported the _Spray_ fifteen miles
off. The wind was freshening, and when she was within eight miles he
said: "The _Spray_ is shortening sail; the mainsail was reefed and set
in ten minutes. One man is doing all the work."

This item of news was printed three minutes later in a Durban morning
journal, which was handed to me when I arrived in port. I could not
verify the time it had taken to reef the sail, for, as I have already
said, the minute-hand of my timepiece was gone. I only knew that I
reefed as quickly as I could.

The same paper, commenting on the voyage, said: "Judging from the
stormy weather which has prevailed off this coast during the past few
weeks, the _Spray_ must have had a very stormy voyage from Mauritius
to Natal." Doubtless the weather would have been called stormy by
sailors in any ship, but it caused the _Spray_ no more inconvenience
than the delay natural to head winds generally.

The question of how I sailed the sloop alone, often asked, is best
answered, perhaps, by a Durban newspaper. I would shrink from
repeating the editor's words but for the reason that undue estimates
have been made of the amount