At the time of shouting "Up!" Captain Nichols stepped over to the Bliss taffrail log trailing on the weather quarter and noted the dial. An hour later we again hove the old-fashioned log and checked our reading on the patent log. For the information of landsmen, it may be well to say that a knot on the log line--and here is where the term comes from--is a distance of forty-seven feet, four inches (for a 28-second glass), the same proportional part of a sea mile or "knot" of 6,080 feet that 28 seconds is of an hour. The different knots along the line are distinguished by fish line tucked into the strands and a knot cast for each mark away from the start. Tenths are estimated, the length between knots being divided by shreds of white bunting into five parts. If sailing fast, as we were, a _short glass_ is sometimes used; this registers fourteen seconds and the readings on the log line must be doubled. In passing it may be well to mention that the old-fashioned log chip, where speeds are not over, say fifteen knots, is the most reliable method of measurement of rate of speed through the roster ever devised. Also, the fact that the sea mile or "knot" is six thousand and eighty feet, and not five thousand two hundred and eighty feet as ashore, is due to the fact that in navigating a ship over the sea it is necessary to have a standard of measurement bearing a simple relation to the size and shape of the earth. One sea mile is the length of one minute of arc measured on the meridian, 6,080 feet. This is the mean value, for, owing to the flattening at the poles, the minute of arc varies slightly from the poles to the equator. Ten knots and over is fair going for any sailer, and extra fine for trade wind sailing. Our hopes for a quick passage were high. The water boiled past us in a smother of swishing foam, a cheerful chatter when homeward bound, while aloft every inch of sail was doing its full duty. Before noon we got the anchor scrubbed clean and at once unshackled the cables and sent them below, bowsing the jackasses into the hawse pipes, as on the passage out. Both bower anchors were then secured inboard and lashed to heavy ring bolts on the fo'c'sle head, the cat and fish falls were unrove, stopped up and stowed below.