Yet spite of that I thought the show as gallant as anything old ocean ever submitted, if it were not a scene of old line-of-battle ships in a gale of wind. They opened into six spires of delicate shadow and snowlike whiteness; they leaned their full and starlike breasts to us, the lustrous canvas tapering to an apex of cloth that was a very puff of sail, wan as some web of cloud near the afternoon moon. Every stitch that would draw was heaped upon them; they had the wind right abeam; to windward they were clothed with studding-sails; betwixt the masts some becalmed wing of fore and aft canvas would swing in and out idly like the pinion of a wounded bird. The sight was a marvellous hurry of shadows, and flashing lights, and steady shining of rounded canvas; and under the bows of each a glass-clear sea arching, flashed into a very snow-storm, and broke aft as far as the gangway. They passed like clouds, silent and stately, and I continued to watch them till they were glowing astern, dwindling and dimming, but, as Captain Burke declared, neck and neck yet even when they had sunk their courses, and nothing above the clews of their topsails were 'dipping' upon the horizon. It was not many days after this that we crossed the equator. A pleasant sailing wind blew us over the line and failed us not till we had reached almost within the Polar verge of the south-east trade wind, into which Captain Burke and the mate sneaked the ship by careful and unwearied attention to every faintest breathing that tarnished the surface of the long, blue equatorial heave. Then one morning, coming on deck, I found a strong wind humming like a concert of organs off the port bow, and the vessel with her yards fore and aft, breaking through a quick spitting sea, and clouds passing like dust over our mast-heads. This was the first of the south-east trade wind. 'It's all right with us now, Miss Otway,' said Captain Burke as he shook me by the hand. 'We're making a straight course for the Horn, and we shall be putting her nose off for the great South Sea presently.'