, of Liverpool, Captain Guy, bound on a sealing and
trading voyage to the South Seas and Pacific.
 

                                  Chapter XIV

The Jane Guy was a fine-looking topsail schooner of a hundred and eighty tons
burden. She was unusually sharp in the bows, and on a wind, in moderate weather,
the fastest sailer I have ever seen. Her qualities, however, as a rough
sea-boat, were not so good, and her draught of water was by far too great for
the trade to which she was destined. For this peculiar service, a larger vessel,
and one of a light proportionate draught, is desirable - say a vessel of from
three hundred to three hundred and fifty tons. She should be bark-rigged, and in
other respects of a different construction from the usual South Sea ships. It is
absolutely necessary that she should be well armed. She should have, say ten or
twelve twelve-pound carronades, and two or three long twelves, with brass
blunderbusses, and watertight arm-chests for each top. Her anchors and cables
should be of far greater strength than is required for any other species of
trade, and, above all, her crew should be numerous and efficient - not less, for
such a vessel as I have described, than fifty or sixty able-bodied men. The Jane
Guy had a crew of thirty-five, all able seamen, besides the captain and mate,
but she was not altogether as well armed or otherwise equipped, as a navigator
acquainted with the difficulties and dangers of the trade could have desired.
    Captain Guy was a gentleman of great urbanity of manner, and of considerable
experience in the southern traffic, to which he had devoted the greater portion
of his life. He was deficient, however, in energy, and, consequently, in that
spirit of enterprise which is here so absolutely requisite. He was part owner of
the vessel in which he sailed, and was invested with discretionary powers to
cruise in the South Seas for any cargo which might come most readily to hand. He
had on board, as usual in such voyages, beads, looking-glasses, tinder-works,
axes, hatchets, saws, adzes, planes, chisels, gouges, gimlets, files,
spoke-shaves, rasps, hammers, nails, knives, scissors, razors, needles, thread,
crockery-ware, calico, trinkets, and other similar articles.
    The schooner sailed from Liverpool on the tenth of July, crossed the tropic
of Cancer on the twenty-fifth, in longitude twenty degrees west, and reached
Sal
