There were various expressions used to mean heaving-to: thus “strake suddenly ahull” to signify “suddenly hove-to.” So also “tried under our maine course, sometimes with a haddock of our sail,” as Davis has it, or “a hullocke of a sayle,” as Smith expresses it. Perhaps it was thus that the synonym “try-sail” originated, signifying a small handkerchief of canvas with which to lie comfortably hove-to. “The third day being calme, at noone we strooke saile, and let fall a cadge anker.” “Cadge” is spelt “kedge” nowadays. They used to “let slippe” their cables--made of hemp--from the “halse” or hawse-pipe. But sometimes “the cable of our shut (= sheet) anker brake.” “For the straines (= strands) of one of our cables were broken, we only road by an olde junke!” (Junk is still sailor’s slang for worn-out rope.) In those days when there was no such thing as telegraph or post, when ships traversing the ocean were so few as unlikely to meet except rarely, months and years went by without news of mariners. But sometimes when an outward-bound English ship met a fellow-countryman homeward-bound, an effort was made to send letters back. There was an instance of this during Davis’s third voyage when two days out from Dartmouth. They met the _Red Lion_ of London sailing home from Spain. So they hailed the latter and asked her master to carry letters back to London. “And after we had heaved them a lead and a line, whereunto wee had made fast our letters, before they could get them into the ship, they fell into the sea, and so all our labour and theirs was also lost.” Happily there still exists the “Traverse-Booke,” which Davis made during his third voyage, when he set out to discover that north-west passage which was only found in the present decade by Captain Roald Amundsen, who also was the first to reach the South Pole. And I cannot believe that even a brief extract of Davis’s sailing will fail to be of the greatest interest to modern seamen, whether amateur or professional. I have therefore thought fit to append the following, which covers the first nine days beginning from the time when his little fleet of three, consisting of the “barke” _Elizabeth_, the “barke” _Sunneshine_, and the “Clincher” _Helene_, weighed their anchors and set sail from Dartmouth. A Traverse-Booke made by M. John Davis in his third voyage for the discoverie of the North-West passage, Anno 1587.