Excerpt from The "Lady Maud" Schooner Yacht Preparing for a voyage ten times as long would have cost me small trouble. A few hours served to complete my arrange ments, and punctually on the appointed day I was at South ampton, waiting for the arrival of the Lady Maud's boat to carry me aboard of her. I was never at that town before, nor have I visited it since and nothing of it remains in my mind but a clear image of the stretch of beautiful sparkling water, with a vision of the Isle of Wight in the southward, and of green shores opposite melting upon the gleaming breast of the sea as they trended toward the Solent. Many yachts and other vessels were riding at anchor, and many more under way, with their white canvas flashing softly in the brilliant sunshine. A pleasant breeze blew from the northeast, but the sky was quite cloudless, a deep, darkly pure blue, like the heavens of the South Pacific. I was anxious to see the vessel that was to be my home for some months, but none of the watermen I asked could tell me which was she. However, I had not long to wait, for whilst I stood admiring a very handsome, heavily sparred yawl, anchored within musket-shot of the pier, a boat pulling six oars shot from under her stern, clearly from one of the yachts lying beyond, and headed directly for the spot I occupied. The men rowed with fine precision, their oars flashed like glass, and the froth twinkled frostily at the stem. Before she was alongside I read the name Lady Maud on the breast of the cockswain's jersey, and went to meet him as he jumped ashore. He had been one of the lane's men, and knew me; and in a few minutes my luggage was brought from the hotel and bundled into the boat. The moment we cleared the stern of the yawl, the cockswain, lady pointed to a large schooner that lay a few fathoms astern of a small vessel similarly rigged, said that that was the Lady Maud. I looked at her eagerly, but the first impression was disappoint ing. She had a straight stem like a cutter's, an unusual thing in a craft of her rig and as her copper came high, starting at the bows a very few inches under the hawse-pipes, she had the look of a revenue boat about the hull. As we approached, however, some good features began to exhibit themselves. She was rather blufi' about the forecastle rail, but rapidly fined down to the water's edge, and was like a knife at that point. Her run was beautiful, and a decided spring forward gave her a defiant posture upon the water. She was large for her class, nearly two hundred tons by Lloyd's measurement. Her spars were the handsomest sticks I had ever seen, and the soaring maintopmast, surmounted by an angular red flag that blew up ward like a tongue of flame against the lovely sky, made the eye giddy that followed it from the low level of a boat. Unlike any of the other yachts about, she carried a topsail and top gallant yard: and, judging from the height of the foreyard from the deck, I reckoned that if Sir Mordaunt Brookes carried a square-sail, it should be big enough to hold a gale of wind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.