. When I went on deck at
six bells, to get a salt-water shower-bath in the head, I found the
schooner gently stealing along over a smooth sea, softly wrinkled to a
most delicate azure hue by the light touch of the faint breeze that came
to us, cool, sweet, and refreshing, out of the north. The sky was a
deep, pure, cloudless blue overhead, merging, by a thousand subtle
gradations, into a warm, pinky, primrose tint along the horizon; and
away to the north, low down in the sky, there floated a few indefinite,
softly-luminous cloud shapes that gave us some reason to hope that we
might be favoured with a more robust breeze later on in the day,
notwithstanding the oily-looking streaks and patches of calm that
appeared here and there upon the ocean's surface. The watch were busily
engaged in swabbing the deck subsequent to a vigorous treatment with the
holystone; the freshly-polished brasswork and the guns flashed like gold
in the brilliant morning sunlight; the white canvas swelled and sank
gently, as the schooner curtsied upon the almost imperceptible heaving
of the swell; everything looked fresh and bright and cheerful, and a
thin wreath of smoke that floated lazily out of the galley funnel and
away over the lee cat-head to the melody of a rollicking sea-ditty
chanted by the cook, as he busied himself with the preparation of
breakfast, imparted that sense of homeliness and light-hearted happiness
which seemed to be all that was required to satisfactorily complete the
picture.

Breakfast was over, and I had just set the watch to work upon certain
jobs requiring the doing, when a boy, whom I had sent aloft to grease
down the topmasts, as a punishment for some trifling misdemeanour,
reported two sail, close together, broad on our starboard beam, and
steering the same way as ourselves. In reply to an inquiry respecting
their appearance, he furnished us with the further information that one
was a brigantine, but he could not quite make out the rig of the other,
although he thought she was a ship. I immediately suspected, from this
reply, that we had accidentally tumbled upon the identical two craft
that we were most anxious to find; and, the better to satisfy myself
upon this important point, I took the ship's telescope and journeyed up
to the royal-yard, from whence I should obtain the most satisfactory
view of them possible. They were at least twenty miles distant, and
therefore quite invisible from the deck, while even