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An American officer of rank once remarked to me: 'Give me a fifteen-knot wooden vessel armed with four heavy guns of long range, and I'll laugh at your lumbering iron-clads. Perhaps he had prize-money in view when he said so; or, what is still more important, he may have felt how easily such vessels as those he proposed would sweep the seas of foreign privateers.
To look out over the side makes me giddy, for the fifteen-knot current, blustering and bubbling and foaming and leaping, gives one the feeling that he is in an express train tearing through the sea.
"Thank God!" he cried, "there's a breeze at last!" and as the overpowered Gabbett, bruised, bleeding, and bound, was dragged down the hatchway, the triumphant doctor hurried upon deck to find the Malabar plunging through the whitening water under the influence of a fifteen-knot breeze. "Stand by to reef topsails!
There was a fair ground-swell running, but no sea. The San Diego was ploughing along at a fifteen-knot clip, not pursuing the zigzag course which it is customary for vessels to follow in enemy-infested waters.
That's already somewhat frequent, methinks," he concluded, suppressing a yawn. "Well, if we are to have any scraps," said "Bill," "we certainly must know how to work the ship and the guns. For, as the skipper said, 'our own fire is our best protection." We bowled along at a good fifteen-knot gait, day after day and night after night. The weather was magnificent and the climate delightful.
Struggles for mastery. Author saves boatman. Fifteen-knot current. Terrific labor on shore. Man nearly falls overboard. Straining hawsers carry us over safely. The merriment among the men. The thundering cataract. Trackers' chanting. Their life. "Pioneer" at the Yeh T'an. The Buffalo Mouth Reach. Story of the "Woodlark." How she was saved. Arrival at Kweifu. Difficulty in landing.
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