Explore "The Phantom Ship" by Frederick Marryat on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We must leave Amine to her solitude, and follow the fortunes of Philip. The fleet had sailed with a flowing sheet, and bore gallantly down the Zuyder Zee; but they had not been under way an hour before the _Vrow Katerina_ was left a mile or two astern. Mynheer Barentz found fault with the setting and trimming of the sails, and with the man at the helm, who was repeatedly changed; in short, with everything but his dear _Vrow Katerina_: but all would not do; she still dropped astern, and proved to be the worst-sailing vessel in the fleet.
"Mynheer Vanderdecken," said he, at last, "the _Vrow_, as my father used to say, is not so very _fast before_ the wind. Vessels that are good on a wind seldom are: but this I will say, that, in every other point of sailing, there is no other vessel in the fleet equal to the _Vrow Katerina_."