We had a lot of yarning together until midnight inside the deck-house, where Tom Jerrold lay an his bunk snoring away, utterly regardless of our presence; and then, on Mr Mackay’s summoning me, by the captain’s order as he told me, to keep watch with him on the poop, I went up the ladder and remained with him astern, watching the ship bowling along under all plain sail, with the same buoyant breeze behind her with which we had started.
“Now, Graham,” said Mr Mackay at daybreak, when we were just off Saint Catharine’s Point in the Isle of Wight, as he informed me, “you can go and turn in. Bosun, call the starboard watch!”
“Aye, aye, sorr,” answered Tim Rooney from the bows, where he had been keeping his vigils, too, like us aft. “Starbowlines, ahoy—!”
I only remained on the poop while the man at the wheel was being relieved, and Mr Saunders, the second mate, came on deck to take Mr Mackay’s place; when, going below to the deck-house cabin, I was soon in my little shelf of a bed, falling asleep more quickly, I think, than I had ever done before; doing so, indeed, almost the instant I got within the blankets.
The next day, at noon, we tore by the Start, and, later on, that noblest monument a man could have, the Eddystone, Smeaton’s glory; the ship racing down Channel as if all the sea-nymphs were chasing us, and old Neptune, too, at their heels to hurry them on, with his tritons after him.
Our average speed all that day was a good ten knots, the wind never shifting and every sail drawing fore and aft. Sometimes it was even more, according to Tom Jerrold’s calculations, he having to heave the log at intervals and turn the fourteen-second glass, his especial duty, in order to determine our rate of progress through the water; but I don’t think it was ever less from the time the sun rose in the morning.
At all events, the Silver Queen made such good use of her time that, at six o’clock on this evening of our second day under sail, we were up to the Lizard, the last bit of English shore we should see in a hurry; and at “six bells” in the first watch, were speeding along some ten miles south of the Bishop’s Rock lightship in the Scilly Isles, really, at last, at sea!