home cargo, and went round, first to Sydney, and afterwards to the Fiji Islands—I shan’t forget Suva Suva Bay in a hurry, I can tell you. So far, everything went serene; for, no matter where we wanted to go—and you see, the skipper wasn’t tied to any especial 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; but I called it queer-sailing; and so did most of the hands, barring Bill the boatswain, who said the captain was right; but anyways, right or wrong, it led us into an ugly corner, as you shall hear.

“Well, we went down the latitudes like one o’clock, the brig, running free before the north-east monsoon as if she were sailing for a wager in a barge-race on the Thames; and the weather as fine as you please, warm and sunny—too much so, sometimes—so that a man hadn’t to do a stroke of work on board, save to take his turn at the wheel. Watch on deck, and watch below, we had nothing to do but loll about, with a stray pull at a brace here and a sheet there, or else walk into our grub and then turn into our bunks; for Cap’en Jiggins was the proper sort of skipper. None of your making work for him when there was nothing to do; but when the hands were wanted, why he did expect them to look alive, and have no skulking—small blame to him, say I, for one!

“We had run down below the parallel of Cape Horn, pretty considerable I should think, when we at last had to ask the old brig to bear up eastwards to lie her proper course; and then you should have seen the tricks she played—confound her! Why, we had to treat her as gingerly as if she were a yacht rounding a mark-boat to make her bear up a point or go to the wind; although I’ll give her the credit of saying, if she were cranky—and she was that, and no mistake—she made no leeway, which was a blessing at all events.

“It was some days after we had altered our course to East South East, with as much more easterly as we could get out of her—and that wasn’t much, try all we could, with as much fore and aft sail as we could get on her—when the weather began to change, and the wind, which had been steadily blowing from the north-east, chopped round a bit more ahead, the sea getting up, and a stray squall coming now and again, which made us more alert trimming the sails, and taking in and letting out canvas as occasion arose. It was no use, however, trying to drive the brig to the eastward any longer with this wind shifting about, humour her as we might; so the skipper altered her course again more to the south, although we were then as far down as we ought to have gone.

“‘The darling,’ says he to the first officer when he gave the order to lay her head South South East, ‘she’s a little playful with the heavy cargo we’ve got on board, and wants to keep warm as long as she can! Let her run a hundred miles or so more south, and then we’ll fetch up to the Horn, and be able to spin along like winking, just as the beautiful creature wants!’

“Well! it did make us mad to hear the old man talk like this about the clumsy old tub; but of course we couldn’t help ourselves, so we only grinned, and said to each other,—‘Catch us coming again in the Cranky Jane when once we’re safe ashore!’

“Would you believe it? The blessed brig, although the new course she was on brought the wind aft instead of on her beam, she was that spiteful over it, that, as it was blowing much stronger than it had been, it took two of us to keep her head from deviating from her proper track, and we had hard work to prevent her from breaking off more than she did.

“The wind came on towards the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and by nightfall—you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in those latitudes—we had to shorten sail so much that the Cranky Jane was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with reefed top-sails and jib and main-sail besides the stay-sails.

“The weather got wilder and wilder as time went on, the heavens quite dark overhead, except an occasional glint of a star which didn’t know whether he ought to show or not; but still, although we were pretty far below the equator, the night was warm and even sultry, so that we expected a hurricane, or cyclone, or something of that sort, for it was quite unnatural to feel as if in the tropics when fifty degrees south!

“The cap’en, I know, thought it would blow by and by, for before he turned in he caused even the reefed top-sails and stay-sails to be taken in, and left her snug for the night, with only a close-reefed main-sail and the jib on her.

“‘Keep a good look-out, Mr Stanchion,’ says he to the chief officer, as he went down the companion-ladder to his cabin, ‘and call me if there’s the slightest change.’

“‘Ay, ay, sir,’ says Mr Stanchion; and so the skipper goes below with a cheerful good-night, in spite of the weather looking dirty and squalls being handy before morning.

“Now, as luck would have it—as some folks say, although others put it down to something more than luck—Mr Stanchion wasn’t like one of those jolly, devil-may-care, slap-dash sort of officers, that your regular shell-backs like best. He was a silent, quiet, reflective man, who looked and spoke as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth; and yet he thought deeper and further than your dash-and-go gentlemen, who act on the spur of the moment without cogitating.

“As soon as the skipper had turned in, he did a thing which perhaps not one officer in a hundred would have done in his place, considering we were on the open ocean out of the