At quarter to five yesterday the skipper, thinking that we would do better on the other tack, wore ship at that hour in half a gale of wind. There was a deal of excitement and bad language on the captain’s part, which so rattled the helmsman that we were thirty-five minutes in wearing, about eighteen or twenty minutes being our average. There was a heavy sea running at the time, too, and in spite of cautions my wife insisted upon sitting on top of the after-cabin skylight during the process of wearing, and when we began to roll heavily when before the wind and sea, the expected happened; for my wife fetched away and would have had a very severe fall if the captain hadn’t grasped her tightly and held on. I tried to reach her in time, but lost my foothold, sat down vehemently, shot straightaway across the smooth deck-house with incredible speed, and brought to with a smash against the deck-house monkey-rail. I kept astonishingly cool in the flight across, and even selected where to put my feet when I should reach the rail; indeed, it was an illustration of the theory that if a man is not paralyzed with horror at some frightful spectacle the presence of danger sharpens his wits, and his mind becomes clear and calculating. Immediately after wearing, the captain ordered the main-sail reefed, and at eight in the evening a single reef was tied in the maintop-sail, the weather being very squally, with much rain and hail. To-day dawned with a light west-southwest wind and a clear sky, with a long, southerly swell which made us roll dreadfully all night. At nine o’clock we broke off to the southward of northwest; so the captain wore round once more, and now we are making south by west half west, Skippers have an odd way sometimes of saying south _by_ west, accenting strongly the “by” as a precaution against mistaking the course for south-southwest, if slurred over quickly. We thought that we had finished with the “Judas Dowes,” but no; this morning at dawn she was in plain view, five miles astern, and overhauled us so rapidly that when we went on the other tack she had neared us to three miles. No sooner had she observed us in the act of wearing than up went her main-sail and cross-jack, and she followed suit; there is no gainsaying the fact that the “Dowes” is the faster ship on a wind, though free things are reversed. By standing so long on the starboard tack through Wednesday’s gale and some heavy winds since we found, when braced up on the port tack last night, that the cargo had shifted slightly, and that on this leg the ship had a tendency to roll to windward. The captain said that the cargo hadn’t actually shifted, but had listed, as sailors call it, the effect on the ship being perceptible to no one but a seaman.