One man is doing all the work." This item of news was printed three minutes later in a Durban morning journal, which was handed to me when I arrived in port.

I could not verify the time it had taken to reef the sail, for, as I have already said, the minute-hand of my timepiece was gone.

I only knew that I reefed as quickly as I could.
The same paper, commenting on the voyage, said: "Judging from the stormy weather which has prevailed off this coast during the past few weeks, the _Spray_ must have had a very stormy voyage from Mauritius to Natal." Doubtless the weather would have been called stormy by sailors in any ship, but it caused the _Spray_ no more inconvenience than the delay natural to head winds generally.
The question of how I sailed the sloop alone, often asked, is best answered, perhaps, by a Durban newspaper.

I would shrink from repeating the editor's words but for the reason that undue estimates have been made of the amount of skill and energy required to sail a sloop of even the _Spray's_ small tonnage.

I heard a man who called himself a sailor say that "it would require three men to do what it was claimed" that I did alone, and what I found perfectly easy to do over and over again; and I have heard that others made similar nonsensical remarks, adding that I would work myself to death.