"Well!" exclaimed Henderson, who was standing by me, close abaft the weather main rigging, watching--as I was--the rapid sliding past us of the various objects ashore, "I've heard people speak of a ship as sailin' like a witch, but I'm only now comin' to rightly understand just exactly what that expression means; it means goin' along precisely as if you was shot out of a gun!  Why, Mr Delamere, I don't believe as there's anything afloat that can touch us--not, at all events, in moderately smooth water.  What we shall do in a heavy sea remains to be seen; and we shall soon find that out, I reckon, for it's all foamin' white away out there in the offing; but I've a notion that she'll go over it all like a duck, provided that we don't drive her too hard. Look at that, sir,"--as the schooner leapt from the crest of a sea into the hollow beyond, and the foam buzzed and boiled to the level of her lee head-rail and then went glancing away dizzily aft--"ain't that just perfectly beautiful?  Never shipped a drop, she didn't!  And there again!  My eyes! but she _is_ a beauty, and no mistake."