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Updated: April 30, 2025
Farmhouses and peasants at work in the fields loomed up as ships, past which we slowly tacked and then dropped them out of sight behind. And still no end of the same infinite level. New clumps rose doubtfully afar, took on form and vanished in their turn. Our men rolled along at a good six-knot gait, and mile went to join mile with little perceptible effect on the surroundings.
"My plan of sailing, gentlemen, is easily comprehended," continued the commander-in-chief, after he had explained his general intentions to chase and engage; "and everyone of you will implicitly follow it. We have the tide strong at ebb, and a good six-knot breeze is coming up at south-west.
A curving beach with rolling surf, a long and very high pier, showing the great rise of the tide, at this point sixty feet in the spring, and directly before one the peculiarly striking promontory of Blomidon, with the red sandstone showing through the dark pines clothing his sides, and at his feet a powerful "rip" tossing the water into chopped seas; a current so strong that a six-knot breeze is necessary to carry a vessel through the passage which here opens into the Bay of Fundy.
Presently we passed out of the lower archipelago, and sighted the first high land closing upon the stream, rolling hills, which vanished in blue perspective, and which bore streaks of fire during the dark hours. Our Cabinda Patron grounded us twice, and even the high night breeze hardly enabled us to overcome the six-knot current off the narrow, whose right side is called Ponta da Diabo.
Our fishing was to be done mainly by trolling, and as soon as we had our bait, Colonel Shepard had a mullet on one of his approved squids. We had a six-knot breeze, and I had to attend to the tiller. The bait was hardly in the water before the Colonel began to tug at his line. I saw a large fish break in the water, a hundred feet from the boat, and "cut up" in the most extraordinary manner.
As soon as John Bull got within range, the gunners began to play on him, but it was at a distance that rendered their fire next to useless. Any one in the least acquainted with the movements of ships, will understand the advantage we now possessed. The Dawn was beating through a good wide passage, with a young flood breasting her to windward, and a steady six-knot breeze blowing.
The wind seemed likely to stand, and was what seamen would be apt to call a good six-knot breeze. To leeward, still distant about a league, lay the French vessels, drawn up in beautiful array, and in an order so close, and a line so regular, as to induce the belief that M. de Vervillin had made his dispositions to receive the expected attack, in his present position.
All I did was to pull him out by the seat of the trousers. The fat old thing had gone out in the dark to the end of the yacht's boat- boom, and was trying to worry in the dinghy with his toe, when plump he dropped into a six-knot ebb tide. Of course, if I hadn't happened along in a launch, he might have drowned, but, as for anything heroic on my part why, the very notion is preposterous.
Then he cried to us to lie flat on the deck and keep out of sight, and he sent one of the best hands to the wheel, wearing a red cap, which was, Dilly told me, to make him look like a Frencher. There was only a light six-knot breeze, and Dilly said that the anchor dragging astern took quite two knots off our speed, so that in the course of an hour the stranger came clearly into view.
At the present moment, as I write this, we are bowling along before it, at a six-knot clip, in the north-east trades. Quite a tidy bit of sea is running. There is nobody at the wheel, the wheel is not even lashed and is set over a half-spoke weather helm.
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