THE MATE'S STORY. 



was a very pretty young girl, and seemed to be too quiet 

 and good for the skipper, who, I thought, did not treat 

 her as he ought to have done. She told me that she was 

 going to take a cottage at Gosport while her husband 

 was away, and asked me, if I had time, to write her a few 

 words to say how the ship got on, in case we met any of 

 the homeward-bound, or stopped at any port. I believe, 

 when she shook hands with me, and said, ' Good-bye, sir ; 

 a happy voyage to you/ I felt much inclined to do her 

 any service, and pitied her lonely situation more than her 

 husband did. She had told me that her only relation 

 was an aged aunt. Well, we floundered across the Bay 

 of Biscay, and ran down the trades, and in twenty-seven 

 days from leaving England with a freezing north wind, 

 we were baking under the line with 95 in the shade 

 shown on our thermometer. The skipper had shoved a 

 couple of our men in irons for very slight offences during 

 our run, and seemed to be a greater brute than ever. 

 He was one of those fellows who acted like an angel on 

 shore, so pleasant and kind, but when he got afloat in 

 blue water, he wasn't an angel exactly, at least not the 

 right sort of arigel. 



" We jogged on, however, till we passed round the 

 Cape ; we gave it a wide berth, and kept well off the bank, 

 to avoid the current that runs from the east all down 

 that coast for seventy miles' distance. We were about off 

 Cape L'Agulhas, when the north-west wind that we had 

 carried with us from near South America, turned round 

 and blew right in our teeth; we had plenty of wind in 

 our jib then, it blew great guns, and we were under close- 



