CHAPTER SEVEN.
AMONGST THE ISLANDS.
In spite of all Captain Miles' endeavours to effect an early start from Saint Vincent, we were not really able to weather the island that evening until many hours after our anchor was tripped and all plain sail made.
This was not due, however, either to the delay caused in hoisting the obstreperous cow on board or to the embarrassing episode that occurred after she was shipped.

It was entirely owing to the failure of our moving spirit the wind; for we lay becalmed until morning under the lee of the giant Souffriere, whose dark shadow prevented the land breeze from reaching the vessel, while the next day was far advanced before we could gain an offing so as to take advantage of the light airs that then sprang up from seaward.

But, then, the _Josephine_, bellying out her canvas, bore away on her voyage.
The wide gulf of sea which we were traversing--named after the aboriginal Caribs who ruled over its domain lang syne, and hedged in from the Atlantic Ocean by the semicircular group of the Lesser Antilles, or "Windward Islands" of the West Indies--presents great difficulties to the navigators of sailing ships; as, while the wind throughout its extent blows almost constantly in one direction, a series of cross currents set in another, making it a hard task for even experienced seamen to preserve a straight course towards any particular point when going to windward, the result of which is that "the longest way round," as in other matters pertaining to shore life, is frequently "the shortest way home!" Taking up the chart casually, a novice would imagine that our direct route from our port of departure to the English Channel would be indicated by a line drawn between the two points and passing through the Azores; but, a sailor accustomed to tropical latitudes would know that, however feasible this might appear in theory, we could not possibly have adopted such a course.

It would have presupposed, in the first case, our possessing the ability to sail straight in the teeth of the north- east trade wind, and, in the second case, that we took no account of the influence of the equatorial current, the stream of which setting westwards into the Caribbean Sea, would have drifted as so far to leeward that at the end of the day's run we must have been pretty nearly where we started from, any progress we made ahead being neutralised by the action of the stream carrying us in a lateral direction.
For these reasons, all navigators up to their work, when making the passage home from the West Indies and _vice versa_, instead of fighting against the forces of nature as some old seamen of the past used to do, now make both winds and tides run harmoniously in their favour by meeting them half-way, so to speak.

Captain Miles, in our instance, therefore, did not wear out his crew by trying to beat to windward in order to get to the open Atlantic immediately.