The remainder of the passage was not such as to call for special comment. My attempt to dodge the N.E. trade was not the success I hoped it would have been; we ran through the anchorage at Santa Cruz at midnight, making noise enough to wake the dead, and leaving particulars behind us in a sort of pyrotechnic washing-tub, so that we might be reported home by cablegram, and finally arrived at Plymouth after a passage the steaming time of which was 38 days 8 hours and 37 minutes. I find that both Plymouth papers call this the fastest passage on record, and for some reason it made a stir in London, for when we got to town I met my old friend Mr. Trapp, and his words were, “Is that your ship that we are all talking about?” I said “Yes.” “I suppose,” he remarked, “you ran all night and did not shorten sail in the hours of darkness.” The old gentleman was back in his thoughts to the usages and customs that had obtained in the days of the Napoleonic wars when he had been privateering. However that may be, the passage was a success; my chief had brought her into London looking spic and span in the most approved Southampton fashion. Both the chairman and the manager were waiting to meet the ship at the docks, and they were so pleased with her appearance that they altered the paint of all the other ships to the fashion we had set. In the _Daily Telegraph_ of June 17, Clark Russell had an article on the passage. It was to all intents and purposes a good performance, but to the day of my death I shall always look back to it with regret, for had I taken a better course to Cape Horn than I did, it might have been a passage that would have held the record for years yet to come. I think, however, that at the finish I had the record for passages both ways. On the next voyage I had with me the chairman of the company, Mr. J. L. Coster, who was in his way a type of the coming New Zealander. He was a keen, clever man, determined that whatever he had to do with should be the best procurable, daring and ambitious to the last degree. He stuck to his friends, and loathed his enemies with a deadly enmity. He had formerly been, I believe, manager of the Bank of New Zealand, but was now certainly the leading spirit of the shipping company and determined that no one should wrest from them their supremacy. I had seen a good deal of my chairman and others connected with the Company in London, and looked forward to a very pleasant passage, for Coster and I got on very well indeed.