This was our third night at sea, and I was now beginning to think that instead of three or four days we should occupy a week, and perhaps longer, in making Mount's Bay; in which conjecture I was confirmed when, finding myself awake at three o'clock in the morning, I pulled on my clothes and went on deck to take a look round, and found the wind a light off-shore air, the stars shining, and the _Spitfire_, with her canvas falling in and out with sounds like the discharge of small arms, rolling stagnantly upon a smooth-backed run of swell lifting out of the north-east, but with a slant in the heave of it that made one guess the impulse which set it running was fair north. I was up again at seven o'clock, with a resolution to let the weather shape my decision as to sticking to the vessel or going ashore, and was not a little pleased to find the yacht making good way with a brilliant breeze gushing steady off her starboard bow. The heavens looked high with fine weather clouds, prismatic mare-tails for the most part, here and there a snow-white, swelling shoulder of vapour hovering over the edge of the sea. Caudel told me we were drawing well on to Portland, but that the wind had headed him, and he was off his course, so that, unless he put the yacht about, we should not obtain a sight of the land. "No matter," said I, "let us make the most of this slant." "That's what I'm for doing, sir. My principle is, always make a free wind, no matter what be the air that's ablowing. Some men's for ratching with the luff of their fore and aft canvas rounding in aweather, so cleverly do they try to split the eye of the breeze. I'm for sailing myself," and he cast a glance up at the rapful canvas, following it on with a look at Jacob Crew, who was suddenly gnawing upon his quid at the tiller, as though to keep him in mind by the expression of his eye of injunctions previously delivered. The greater part of this day Grace and I spent on deck, but nothing whatever happened good enough to keep my tale waiting whilst I tell you about it. Strong as the off-shore breeze was, there was but little sea, nothing to stop the yacht, and she ran through it like a sledge over a snow plain, piling the froth to her stem-head and reeling off a fair nine knots as Caudel would cry out to me with an exultant countenance of leather every time the log was hove. He talked of being abreast of the _Start_ by three o'clock in the morning. "Then," said I to my sweetheart, "if that be so, Grace, there will be but a short cruise to follow." At this she looked grave, and fastened her eye with a wistful expression upon the sea over the bows as though Mount's Bay lay there, and as though the quaint old town of Penzance, with its long esplanade and rich flanking of green and well-tilled heights, would be presently showing.