Lucky Discovery.

"The weather had settled to calm, and in lat. 25deg. N. we ran out of the trades into another patch of calm, and here occurred one of those unexpected incidents which crop up occasionally in a life at sea. The skipper, who was an enthusiastic fisherman, had sighted an object about a mile off, which through the glasses appeared to be a large bit of driftwood or spar, heavily encrusted with barnacles and marine growth, and reckoning to find dolphin or kingfish round it, and as the sea was quite smooth, he had the boat put over, and, taking the grains and a couple of the hands to pull, went off to try his luck. After circling round the object, we saw that he had made fast and was towing towards the ship, and, when near enough, shouted to us to get a heavy purchase up on the main yard to hoist it on board. This was done in due course, and after chipping and scraping the barnacles off we found we had recovered a splendid pitch-pine log which, on measurement, proved to be just big enough in length and girth to replace our topmast, which had been damaged in the squall. Everybody who could use a broad axe or an adze was put to work on it, and in a few days we had put up a better spar than the damaged one.

"From here we picked up more or less favourable winds until near the Western Islands, as the Azores are known to sailors, and here again we met our rival, sighting her at daylight ahead of us, but near enough to read her name with the telescope. We had a fine fair wind, as much as we could stagger under with all sails set, and she must have passed us during the night, as she was gradually drawing away from us, do what we could to catch her, and by daylight next morning she had disappeared again. What rotten luck! We could already seepage 235 ourselves paying over the bets. We carried favouring winds varying in strength from a moderate breeze to half a gale from here to the chops of the channel, Capt. Hughes driving her for all she was worth, though we had little hopes of catching the Oban Bay again, as she seemed to have the heels of us running before the wind.