And now for our vessel, of what sort should she be? She must, of course, be of fair beam. We are beginning to believe in beam again, and are returning to the wisdom of our ancestors, recognising the fact that beam is not incompatible with speed, whilst it is indispensable for comfort both on deck and below on an ocean cruise. I remember, when we sailed away in the 'Falcon' to South America twelve years ago, yachting men shook their heads at our beam; I was assured that I should never get more than six knots an hour out of such a tubby craft, more especially as she was snugly sparred and could fly so little canvas. She had a length of 42 feet to a beam of 13 feet. As it turned out, we often got nine knots out of her, and made one voyage of 2,000 nautical miles in ten days, the current, it must be said, being favourable to us on this occasion. But the proportionate beaminess of the 'Falcon' is not necessary for the bigger craft, and the beam of our 50-tonner should be about a quarter of her length. When choosing my vessel I should prefer, for other reasons than economy, to buy an old one that had been well cared for to building or purchasing a new one. Tropical climates soon develop defects in wood, and though it may be impossible to detect any flaws or signs of early decay in a new vessel, the timber of which she is constructed may have been put in sappy, and she may be ready to break out into dry rot on the slightest provocation. Tough old human beings who have weathered the ailments of youth are not likely to fall into consumption, and so it is with the ship. If she has knocked about for years and shown no symptoms of decay, then she has proved herself to have been put together of the right stuff, and she will remain sound in her good old age. If one came across some old teak vessel, such as my 'Alerte' was, a quarter of a century old, constructed by a good builder in the strong, honest fashion of those days, not put together in a hurry, but leisurely; with not a plank in her that was not well seasoned and selected, and that had not been lying in the builder's loft for a year before it was used, and with timbers and deadwood stouter than are employed now, and if, after careful examination, she proved from stem to stern, from deck to keel, as sound as when she was put on the stocks, even in those treacherous and usually ill-ventilated corners inside the counter, then that vessel is the one to be possessed of by the man who would go foreign; for she can be more safely trusted than many a brand-new craft, scamped, pleasing to the eye, but of unsound constitution, like some fair pulmonary with the germs of disease latent in her bones. The 'Alerte' was a vessel of this good old sort--I say was, for after I had left her, this yawl, which properly cared for would have completed her century of cruising, was lost by a piece of wicked negligence off the West Indian island of Trinidad, and is now lying at the bottom in one hundred fathoms of water.