"What's that knot there, Mr. Stevens?" I called out. "Bear a hand! the line is cutting my fingers in halves!" He put down the sand-glass and laid hold of the line where the knot was, and began to count. "Fifteen!" he roared. "Well, I'm jiggered!" exclaimed the man steering. I looked at Stevens triumphantly, as though I should say, "What do you think of that?" "I told you you wur wrong, Mr. Royle," said the boatswain. "It's all fifteen. By jingo! it ain't sailing, it's engine drivin'!" The true speed of the _Grosvenor_ was about nine and a half knots--certainly not more; and whether the carpenter should believe the report of the log or not, was nothing to me. "Log it fifteen on the slate, bo'sun, and keep the log going every hour," I said, and went below again. I saw, as was now my regular custom at every meal, that the steward took a good breakfast to the Robertsons' cabin, and then sat down with Stevens to the morning repast. I took this opportunity of suggesting that if the wind held, and the vessel maintained her present rate of speed, we might hope to be in the Gulf of Mexico in a fortnight. "How do you make that out? It was three weeks yesterday." "And it might have been a month," I answered. "But a few days of this kind of sailing, let me tell you, Mr. Stevens, make a great difference in one's calculations." "How fur off is the Gulf of Mexico?" he asked. "About a couple of thousand miles." "Oh, a couple of thousand miles. Well, an' what reckoning do you get out o' that?" "Suppose you put the ship's pace down at thirteen knots an hour?" "I thought you made it fifteen?" he exclaimed, looking at me suspiciously. "Yes, but I don't suppose we shall keep that up. For the sake of argument I call it thirteen?" "Well?" cramming his mouth as he spoke. "In twenty-four hours we shall have run a distance of three hundred and twelve miles." He nodded. "Therefore, if we have the luck to keep up this pace of two knots less than we are now actually doing, for fifteen days, we shall have accomplished--let me see." I drew out a pencil, and commenced a calculation on the back of an old envelope. "Three hundred and twelve multiplied by fifteen. Five times naught are naught; three naughts and two are ten; add two thousand; we shall have accomplished a distance of four thousand six hundred and eighty miles--that is two thousand six hundred and eighty miles further than we want to go." He was puzzled (and well he might be) by my fluent figures, but would not appear so. "I understand," said he. "Stop a bit," I exclaimed; "I want to show you something." I entered the captain's cabin, procured a chart of the North and South Atlantic, including the eastern American coast, and spread it upon the table. "The two thousand miles I have given you," said I, "would bring you right off the Mississippi. See here." He rose and stooped over the chart.