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On the next day but one, I met in a New Orleans paper a further allusion to her, coupled with the remark that a suspicious-looking vessel, clipper-built, with a black hull, had been seen several times during the past few weeks cruising in the Gulf, and expressing a fear lest she had come across the Empress. I thought this would have driven me beside myself.

"I was a wild one, though not large, but limber and clipper-built, and happy any side up, and my notion of human life was that it was something like a cake-walk, and something like a Bartlett pear, as being juicy anywhere you bit in."

While we were on the yards, we saw the Loriotte under way, and, before our yards were mast-headed, the Ayacucho had spread her wings, and, with yards braced sharp up, was standing athwart our hawse. There is no prettier sight in the world than a full-rigged, clipper-built brig, sailing sharp on the wind. In a minute more our slip-rope was gone, the head-yards filled away, and we were off.

The "Bella" was a full-rigged ship of nearly 500 tons burden, clipper-built, and almost new. Aboard this ship, then taking in her cargo of coffee and logwood, came one April morning a young English gentleman who introduced himself as Mr. Tichborne. He was dressed in a half tourist, half nautical costume, and wanted a passage to Kingston.

"Och, boy, pull up, or ye'll kill the baste!" cried Barney, who thundered along at Martin's side enjoying to the full the spring of his powerful horse; for Barney had spent the last farthing of his salary on the two best steeds the country could produce, being determined, as he said, to make the last overland voyage on clipper-built animals, which, he wisely concluded, would fetch a good price at the end of the journey.

Let us take two instances which 1852 has afforded, one furnished by England, and one by America one connected with the Australian trade, and one with the Chinese. The Aberdeen clipper-built barque, Phoenician, arrived at Plymouth on February 3, having left Sydney on November 12, and performed the voyage in 83 days! Her previous voyages had varied from 88 to 103 days.

They got to the docks in time, and got on board that fast-sailing, clipper-built, never-beaten, always-healthy ship, the Flash of Lightning, 5,600 tons, A 1. Why, we have often wondered, are ships designated as A 1, seeing that all ships are of that class? Where is the excellence, seeing that all share it? Of course the Flash of Lightning was A 1.

By and by the children caught sight of the old tarpaulin hat and the blue ribbons and the Captain himself, all in this state of violent excitement; and down they bore at once upon the ancient mariner, as if he were a regular bluff-bowed old East Indiaman, full of golden ingots, and they were clipper-built, copper-fastened, rakish fore-and-afters of the piratical pattern. "Heyday!"

Then, too, the trade with China grew to such great proportions that some of the finest fortunes America knew in the days before the "trust magnate" and the "multimillionaire" were founded upon it. The clipper-built ship, designed to bring home the cargoes of tea in season to catch the early market, was the outcome of this trade.

The breeze continued generally fair, and at all times enabled us to lie our course; for being, as I have said before, clipper-built, the pirate schooner could lie very close to the wind and make little leeway. We had no difficulty now in managing our sails, for Jack was heavy and powerful, while Peterkin was active as a kitten.