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This, in my own poor way, having been done, I now moor ship, weather-bitt cables, and leave the sloop Spray, for the present, safe in port. Her pedigree so far as known The Lines of the Spray Her self-steering qualities Sail-plan and steering-gear An unprecedented feat A final word of cheer to would-be navigators.
She steered easily, and she could run day and night, without steering, close-by, full- and-by, and with the wind abeam. With the wind on her quarter and the sails properly trimmed, she steered herself within two points, and with the wind almost astern she required scarcely three points for self-steering. The Snark was partly built in San Francisco.
Sir Reginald at once stepped to the tiller and laid his hand on it. "Where am I to steer for?" he asked. "Head for the liner, in the first instance," answered Mildmay, as he threw the self-steering apparatus out of gear; "and then bring the ship's head very gradually round until you are pointing for the pirate's stern."
And the whole contrivance was rendered self-steering by the attachment of a few fathoms of line to the after-end of the middle plank, at the other extremity of which a drogue, consisting of a short length of plank, was attached.
But heaving-to meant loss of time; and having already lost so much I was very reluctant to lose more, if such loss could possibly be avoided. I therefore set the boat going on her correct compass course, and then, releasing the yoke-lines, I endeavoured to render the craft self-steering by adjusting the fore and mizen sheets.
"Well, to begin with," I said, as the dome of the Statehouse caught my eye, "what on earth have you stuck up there? It looks for all the world like one of those self-steering windmills the farmers in my day used to pump up water with. Surely that is an odd sort of ornament for a public building." "It is not intended as an ornament, but a symbol," replied the doctor.
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