Memoirs of John Adams Dix; comp. by his son, Morgan Dix.

178

MEMOIRS OF JOHN ADAMS DIX.

close-reefed top-sails-and we were on a lee-shore, in a thick
fog. The captain had never been at Cadiz, but he had been
up all night studying an excellent chart, which he had found
at Funchal, and had made himself as familiar with the coast
and harbor as though he had navigated them all his life. At
nine in the morning he told a few of us that he should be opposite the light-house in an hour, if his reckoning was right,
and he must then choose between the alternatives of standing
in or of attempting to beat out to sea. The latter would have
been full of peril, for if the wind had continued to increase,
as in fact it did, we should in all probability have gone ashore
before night. The captain at half-past nine took his station in
the foretop, and in half an hour more stood boldly in for the
land. To those of us who understood the matter the next
half-hour was a period of extreme anxiety. But it was hardly over before the captain's clear voice was heard, amid the
roaring of the storm, giving his orders to the helmsman with
as much confidence as if he had been on his own native coast.
I-e had descried the light-house at. a distance of about half
a mile-the first object we had seen, excepting a few vessels
which crossed our path, since we lost sight of the Desertas.
He was now at home. He had so thoroughly mastered his
chart that he knew the bearings of all the shoals and breakers which lie at the mouth of the harbor from the lighthouse, and he remained in the foretop until we had passed
them all, directing the motions of the vessel with perfect
calmness and confidence. It was certainly no small triumph
of nautical skill on the part of our Yankee captain. He had
sailed nearly six hundred miles, and had hit the light-house at
the mouth of the harbor to which he was destined within fifteen minutes after his reckoning was up. It must be confessed, too, that there was some good-luck in it. But his subsequent management of the vessel, steering her through breakers and reefs of rocks without the aid of a pilot, was all skill
and good judgment."
It would be difficult to speak too warmly of the pleasure