f those strange-looking native
crafts standing in for the land with the sea breeze."

Raby had the telescope at his eye, and he was pointing it towards a sail
which was rapidly approaching the shore. So broad and lofty was the
canvass, that the hull looked like the small car of a balloon, in
comparison to it, as if just gliding over the surface of the blue and
unruffled sea.

The view both up and down the harbour, and in every direction, was very
interesting. Directly facing them was Port Ricasoli, with its tiers of
guns threatening any invader, and the black, wave-washed rocks at its
base. A little to the right, in a sort of bay between it and Port Saint
Angelo, appeared the white and elegant buildings of the Naval Hospital;
and further on, towering upwards from the water, the last-mentioned
fort, with its numerous rows of heavy guns, having behind it the
Dockyard creek, or Galley harbour, where, in the days of yore, the
far-famed galleys of the knights were drawn up, and secure from attack.
On either side were white stone walls and buttresses, glittering in the
sunshine; overhead a sky of intense blueness; and below, a mirror-like
expanse of waters, reflecting the same cerulean hue, on which floated
innumerable crafts, of all shapes, sizes, and rigs, from the proud
line-of-battle ship which had triumphantly borne the flag of England
through the battle and the breeze, to the little caique with its great
big eyes in its bow and strange-shaped stem and high outlandish stern,
filled with its swarthy, skirmish crew of vociferating natives. Among
the merchantmen, the ensigns of all nations might be seen--the stars and
stripes of Uncle Sam's freedom-loving people alongside the black
lowering eagle of Russia; the cross of the Christian Greek, and the
crescent of the infidel Turk; there was the banner of the Pope, and of
Sardinia, and of various other Italian States; but outnumbering them
all, by far, was the red flag of Britain. Far out to the eastward,
where the sky and sea formed the horizon, there was a slight,
gauze-like, whitish haze, through which could be seen the lofty canvas
of several vessels, rising, as it were, like spirits from the watery
deep, and just catching the rays of the sun declining in the opposite
direction, which gave an unusual brilliancy to their wide-spread sails.
But the craft which most attracted the attention of our friends was the
one Raby had been looking at.

He pointed her out to his