The lieutenant of the watch, Smith, and I had it all to ourselves; unbroken, save for the half-hourly call of the lookouts: "Starboard cathead!" "Port cathead!" "Starboard gangway!" "Port gangway!" "Life buoy!" He came forward from time to time to take it all in, and to see how the light spars were standing, for the ship was heeling eight or ten degrees, and racing along, however quietly; but the strain was steady, no whipping about from uneasy movement of the vessel, and we carried on to the end. Each hour I hove the log and reported: one o'clock, eleven knots; two o'clock, eleven; three o'clock, eleven--famous going for an old sailing-ship close-hauled. Splendid! we rubbed our hands; what a record! But, alas! at four o'clock, ten! Commonly, ten used to be a kind of standard of excellence; Nelson once wrote, as expressive of an utmost of hopefulness, "If we all went ten knots, I should not think it fast enough;" but, puffed up as we had been, it was now a sad come-down. Smith looked at me. "Are you _sure_, Mr. Mahan?" With the old hand-log, its line running out while the sand sped its way through the fourteen-seconds glass, the log-beaver might sometimes, by judicious "feeding"--hurrying the line under the plea of not dragging the log-chip--squeeze a little more record out of the log-line than the facts warranted; and Smith seemed to feel I might have done a little better for the watch and for the ship. But in truth, when a cord is rushing through your hand at the rate of ten miles an hour--fifteen feet a second--you cannot get hold enough to hasten the pace. He passed through a struggle of conscience. "Well, I suppose I must; log her ten-four." A poor tail to our beautiful kite. Ten-four meant ten and a half; for in those primitive days knots were divided into eight fathoms. Now they are reckoned by tenths; a small triumph of the decimal system, which may also carry cheer to the constant hearts of the spelling reformers. A year later, at like dead of night, I witnessed quite another scene. We were then off the mouth of the river La Plata, perhaps two hundred miles from shore. We had been a fortnight at sea, cruising; and I have always thought that the captain, who was interested in meteorology and knew the region, kept us out till we should catch a _pampero_. We caught it, and quite up to sample. I had been on deck at 9 P.M., and the scene then, save for the force of the wind, was nearly the same as that I have just described. The same sail, the same cloudless sky and large moon; but we were going only five knots, with a quiet, rippling sea, on which the moonbeams danced. Such a scene as Byron doubtless had in memory: "The midnight moon is weaving Her bright chain o'er the deep; Whose breast is gently heaving Like an infant's asleep."