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Late in the afternoon, the ship being under all plain sail, on the port tack, heading due west, the voice of the lookout on the mainroyal-yard floated down to the deck in that hail which is always thrilling at sea, and was doubly so in this instance, "Sail ho!" Motioning to the officer of the deck, Jones himself replied in his powerful voice, "Where away?" "Broad off the lee-beam, sir."

This storm past, we had fair weather until we got into the Irish Sea. The morning following the storm, when the sea and sky had become blue again, the man aloft sung out that there was a wreck on the lee-beam. We bore away for it, all hands looking eagerly toward it, and the captain in the mizzen-top with his spy-glass. Presently, we slowly passed alongside of it.

There was only one hope left, and that was, that, should the tide change and take us under our lee-beam, it might possibly set us off on the Nine-fathom bank, which is situated at a distance of twelve miles north-northwest, off Boulogne harbor.

Pipes, who had hitherto sat silent, being thus called upon to give his evidence, after divers strange gesticulations, opened his mouth like a gasping cod, and with a cadence like that of the east wind singing through a cranny, pronounced, "Half a quarter of a league right upon our lee-beam."