I have already referred in the previous chapter to the lateen sail having been adapted from the Egyptian rig a few centuries before the Christian era. But it is probable that between the squaresail rig and the lateen there was just one intermediate stage. By tilting the yard at a different angle to the mast, instead of it being at right angles, so that the foot came down lower, and the peak of the sail was pointed higher, it would be found that the ship would hold a better wind. This is amply borne out by the Egyptian “Nugger” (see Fig. 8), which is still in use on the Nile above the second cataract, and is being replaced only very slowly by the lateen. There is a relief on a sarcophagus found in the precincts of the Vatican, and now in the Lateran Museum, which certainly resembles the “Nugger” in its transition from the squaresail to the lateen. (The date of this is about 200 A.D.). The only important difference is that the Vatican relief shows a topsail added. Finally, discarding the boom altogether, the lateen sail comes with the foot of the sail lower still, and consequently the peak much higher, being but an exaggerated form of our modern lug-sail so prevalent in sailing dinghies. This remains, as we have pointed out above, as the characteristic sail of the Mediterranean, the Nile and Red Sea. [Illustration: FIG. 8. AN EGYPTIAN NUGGER.] Before we close this chapter one must refer to the vexed question as to when the ancients discovered that wonderful art of sailing against the wind—tacking. In the absence of any definite knowledge, I hold the opinion that this first came into practice on the Nile about the time the nugger, or dhow was introduced as the rig for sailing boats. My reasons for this supposition are: firstly, the squaresail being more suitable for the open sea and making passages of some length, it would be a country having a navigable river that would be likely to discover such a rig as would enable them to sail with the stream _against_ the prevailing northerly wind; secondly, arguing on the theory (which has many adherents) that the dhow came in about the time of the death of Alexander the Great who revolutionised at least one corner of Egypt, leaving behind his name to the port of Alexandria as an eternal memorial, I hold that the invention of this dhow rig made the ship to come very close to the wind—far closer than the old-fashioned squaresail of the earlier Egyptians. Realising, when coming down with the stream, that they could go so near to the wind when approaching the right bank, why—surely it must have occurred to such highly developed minds—could they not do the same when zigzagging across to the left shore? At first, no doubt, they pulled her head round with their oars, until, perhaps, on one occasion, she carried so much way from the last shore that she came round of her own accord—shook herself for a moment, as she hung for a short time in stays—and then paid off on the other tack. After that,