Explore "God and the Man" by Robert W. Buchanan on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Early the next day, the good ship Miles Standish, with free sheets and all sail set, was slipping with a fair wind down the English Channel, with her bowsprit pointing almost due westward, and the low-lying shores of England lying dark and dim on the starboard side. The breeze was light, yet firm, the smooth billows just darkened by a pleasant ripple, the skies overhead blue and light, and the air sunny.
She was not a brilliant sailer, the Miles Standish, and was without splendid accomplishments or beauty of any kind; but she did her work in a sober, settled, business-like fashion, that showed she could be depended upon in all kinds of weather. Though she was well laden, she carried her cargo easily, and there, in the open ocean highway, where vessels of all sorts and sizes were going and coming, she held her own, running with many clippers of her own tonnage, and would have proved a laggard only in the event of a long beat to windward.