Whether it was owing to the foregoing incantation I do not know, but we did eventually get away from the line. Our passage, however, was completely spoiled, and at the end of it we were shamefully outsailed by that celebrated clipper the _Jerusalem_. We were going up-Channel with a fine southerly wind that was about a-beam, but, as I have said before, we were a bit tender and could not usefully under those conditions carry all the sail we should have wished. The _Jerusalem_ passed us to windward under all plain sail, and we felt the beating badly, for we could not carry our royals without burying the lee side to the detriment of our speed. Off Beechy Head, however, we took on board a hoveller as a Channel pilot, and I can hear even now the sigh of relief the old man gave as he welcomed him on board. There is nothing more to chronicle of that ship; I had made up my mind she did not suit me--nor I her--so we parted with scant regret on either side. There was in the East India Docks a vessel called the _Albuera_. She belonged to the firm of John Willis & Co., and rejoiced in a double row of painted ports. To her I transferred my services. Her captain, Gissing by name, was a nice fellow, and we should have got on together, but my fortune was now in the ascendant, and I left her to take up the berth in steam that was then becoming the ambition of all young seamen. The Suez Canal was open, and it required no great prescience to foresee the end of sails. The modern sailing-ship that was then being built, however, was very beautiful. Let me instance one as an example, the _Lothair_; she was afterwards commanded by Tom Boulton, but she was built on the lines of a yacht and was as beautiful, although the modern ship never had the stately grace of the old frigate-built Indiaman. CHAPTER V “The liner she’s a lady by the paint upon her face, An’ if she meets an accident they count it sore disgrace.” KIPLING Good-bye to sail! The chance had come to make the plunge that was rendered inevitable by the opening of the Suez Canal and the march of modern invention. It was sad to realise that the sailing-ship was becoming a back number and that the future for the sea lay with steam--a means of propulsion that would for ever put in the background the manly management of masts, yards and sails. To-day, the period in which this country won its greatest triumphs on the sea is commonly referred to (even in the Royal Navy) as the “stick and string time,” but I am old-fashioned enough to believe that the seamen of the past were in their way as clever engineers as the men that fit and drive the modern turbine engines.