“That brig?  What do you mean?”

“The boat which took me round the world and brought me back, and which I am going to sell, my travelling days being over.”  Seeing she was interested, he continued to tell her how the Medusa had been declared no longer seaworthy, and of his purchase of another yacht.

“But you said you wished the brig had gone down.”

And, seizing the pretext, he began to tell her of the first thing that came into his head; how he had sailed some thousands of miles from the Cape to the Mauritius, explaining the mysteries of great circle sailing, and why they had sailed due south, though the Mauritius was in the north-west, in order that they might catch the trade winds.  Before reaching these there were days when the sailors did little else but shift the sails, trying to catch every breeze that fluttered about them, tacking all the while, with nothing to distract them but the monotonous albatross.  The birds would come up the seas, venturing within a few yards of the vessel, and float away again, becoming mere specks on the horizon.  Again the specks would begin to grow larger, and the birds would return easily on moveless wings.

“When one hears the albatross flies for thousands of miles one wonders how it could do this without fatigue; but one wonders no longer when one has seen them fly, for they do not weary themselves by moving their wings, their wings never move, they float month after month until the mating instinct begins to stir in them, and then in couples they float down the seas to the pole.  There is nothing so wonderful as the flight of a bird; and it seemed to me that I never could weary of watching it.  But I did weary of the albatross, and one night, after praying that I might never see one again, I was awakened by the pitching of the vessel, by the rattling of ropes, and the clashing of the blocks against swaying spars.  I had been awakened before by storms at sea.  You remember, Evelyn, when I returned to Dulwich—­I had been nearly wrecked off the coast of Marseilles?” Evelyn nodded.  “But the sensation was not like anything I had ever experienced at sea before, and interested and alarmed I climbed, catching a rope, steadying myself, reaching the poop somehow.”

“‘We’re in the trades, Sir Owen!’ the man at the helm shouted to me.  ‘We’re making twelve or fourteen knots an hour; a splendid wind!’

“The sails were set and the vessel leaned to starboard, and then the rattle of ropes began again and the crashing of the blocks as she leaned over to port.  Such surges, you have no idea, Evelyn, threatening the brig, but slipping under the keel, lifting her to the crest of the wave.  Caught by the wind for a moment she seemed to be driven into the depths, her starboard grazing the sea or very nearly.  The spectacle was terrific; the lone stars and the great cloud of canvas, the whole seeming such a little thing beneath it, and no one on deck but the helmsman