Then for the whole of that Egyptian night, making a bewildering tangle of courses that was enough to whiten a mathematician's hair to ravel out, we toiled at the braces under the master's direct orders. _We_ had watch and watch, but he was on duty all night. Standing by the compass, watchful and alert in spite of his seventy years, he utilized every favourable cats-paw, manœuvred against the unfavourable ones, remembering the possibilities of the unknowable currents beneath, and keeping before his mental vision a picture of the contour of that rugged coast. When morning dawned he had his reward; for we were almost through the Straits, with the first kiss of the south-east trade wind saluting us, and the broad bosom of the Indian Ocean lying invitingly before us under a canopy of stainless blue. And of our comrades of the previous day only one could be seen, just discerned so far astern that she was only a speck on the horizon. To grasp the significance of such a piece of seamanship, it is necessary to remember that in a square-rigged ship the swinging of the great yards is not a momentary affair, like the slipping over of a schooner's fore and aft sails. Time and much labour are required. Moreover, the closest attention is necessary in order to utilize intermittent wind-breaths, as these were; for a big ship with little motion obeys her helm but slowly, and soon loses, if she be caught aback, that is, gets the wind on the wrong side of her sails, what little "way" or forward motion she has--a loss that she is loth to make good. Again, in a sailing ship native courage in the master counts immensely. No amount of experience will atone for a want of this quality. Some men are so prudent, in other words, so lacking in courage, that they will shorten sail at the first premonition of bad weather, instead of reducing canvas as the weight of wind makes it impossible for the ship to carry it with safety. Of course there are circumstances where such prudence is absolutely necessary, as in the case of ships who do not carry sufficient men, or whose crews are of such poor quality that they are hardly competent to handle the sails in fine weather; also when the equipment of a ship has been so shamefully starved that the carrying of sail in anything like a breeze is bound to end in wholesale loss. And this matter of prudence in carrying sail has its dangerous side also. Many a dreadful storm has been endured by a ship that she would have escaped altogether had she kept up her speed; many a ship has been overtaken by a following sea and left almost derelict by its onslaught that would have gallantly outraced it had she not been made helpless by the clipping of her broad wings.