it was a sight that made Mitsos lick his lips with blood-thirstiness. "You would say she was a fortress," he said. The two chattered like children over a new toy all their own, and Kanaris, who soon joined them, seemed to each to be like an elder who had outgrown enthusiasm; yet even to him the toy seemed flawless. The Turkish men-of-war and cruisers alike were contemptibly inferior in point of speed, and the men-of-war, which were armed with much heavier guns, carried all their strength in the broadside, while the Capsina's ship had two guns which could shoot straight ahead or astern, and six which could fire on either diagonal. Meantime the ship was nearing Astra, and the wisdom or foolishness of Mitsos's tactics would soon be patent. But while they were still three miles off he turned to the Capsina. "I have made a mistake," he said. "If we go about at once we shall still make the channel. For indeed she could go as an arrow goes." The Capsina smiled with a thrill of pleasure in her ship. "I won a pound over you yesterday," she said; "and if Kanaris will bet again, I will stand to win another. Give your orders, little Mitsos." Kanaris looked incredulous. "Kranidi is a very fine place," he said; "but I take it we want to sail between Spetzas and the land." "Will you bet?" asked the Capsina. Kanaris paused a moment, and heard Mitsos giving the order in a voice extraordinarily confident. "I think I will not bet," he said. After that there was the sailing-gear of the ship to be gone through. To Mitsos, used as he was to the big schooner sail, these square canvases seemed a thought unwieldable, but the foresails, the jib, and halyards had taken his fancy at once. "It is a rein to a horse," he said; "it must go as you will." "And it is according to your will that it shall go," said Sophia. The hours of the golden day went by; they had made eight knots in the first hour, and nine in the second; and about ten in the morning, Kranidi, a grain of sparkling salt in the gray stretch of hill, appeared small and very distant. And at that Mitsos frowned. "Again I was wrong," he said; "we might have put about a mile sooner. But, indeed, how was I to know?" They were through the channel of Spetzas before noon; but presently, after the wind dropped altogether, and for a couple of hours, they lay becalmed on a windless sea, but swept slowly northward by the current running up the coast. The Capsina chafed at the delay, for though she would have waited two days or three at Nauplia, as she had said, for Mitsos, the loss of a few hours now seemed wholly disproportionate, for she was very eager to get off again on the fresh cruise. Kanaris remembered the morning he had spent with Nikolas on the Gulf of Corinth, and said to the Capsina: "I was with Nikolas Vidalis in just such a position as this, and he said what seemed to me a very wise thing, Capsina: 'I am never in a hurry,' says he, 'when I am going as fast as I can.'"