me
apparent enough.

The commodore had ordered a storm jib to be set, as well as the after-
trysail, which was about the size of a good old-fashioned pocket-
handkerchief; and, instead of laying-to as we had been when I turned in
close on midnight, the ship was now running before the south-easter and
making good progress, too, out of the neighbourhood of the treacherous
Bay.

By breakfast-time we were making so much better weather of it that we
were able to open the hatches, and the windsails were rigged up to let
down some fresh air below, which enabled us to have a better meal than
we expected; so our hot cocoa and bread possessed an additional relish,
not only from this circumstance, but also from the fact of our not
having enjoyed anything hot since the previous day at dinner, the galley
fires having been swamped out just before tea-time, thus forcing us to
turn in supperless.

Later on, as the gale slackened, we set our topsails close-reefed, and
more `fore-and-aft' sail; and, when the sun had got above our foreyard,
the commodore ordered the topgallant-masts to be sent up, these having
been housed when it came on to blow heavily. Our topgallants were
consequently set above our close-reefed topsails, which some of the
young seamen on board appeared to think a most extraordinary proceeding;
but one of the quarter-masters, who was an old hand, said he had often
seen it done when sailing "under old Fitzroy on the Pacific station,"
when their ship would be bowling along under this sail before a stiff
nor'-easter, in the run down from Vancouver to Callao, past the
inhospitable Californian coast.

At noon that day, the navigating officer, who took the sun on the poop,
surrounded by a lot of the young midshipmen we had on board for
instruction during the training cruise, like us boys on the lower deck
each in our respective billet, gave out that we were in latitude 44
degrees 10 minutes north, and longitude 10 degrees 15 minutes west, thus
showing that we were well to the westward of the ill-omened Cape
Finisterre and now safely out of the Bay of Biscay!

The navigator also told our commanding officer, in the usual stereotyped
nautical formula, that it was twelve o'clock.

"All right," replied the commodore. "Make it so!"

Accordingly, the sentry on the forecastle struck Eight Bells, and the
men were piped down to dinner; the boatswain's mates sounding their
shrill calls through the ship as the echo of the last