Note 69 — Chapter XXIX · HOMEWARD BOUND.

This is a literal fact. Three weeks after sailing from Christiansand, and seventeen days after losing sight of land of any kind,—during which time there had been but two days in which the brig could lie her course,—the author was in the fore-rigging, on the look-out for the Outer Garboard buoy. He had but small hopes of seeing it, he admits, for the brig had been navigated by log, lead, and compass alone; nevertheless it is true, that within half-an-hour of his taking up his look-out place, and precisely in the direction in which he was looking, there was the buoy,—a little black speck, like a dancing boat. This, considering that the steamer in which he had gone out—a vessel commanded by a lieutenant in her Majesty’s navy—was fifty miles out of her reckoning, after a straight course of four days, seemed, to say the least, remarkable.