ing small
piercing eyes; the large good-humoured mouth ever ready to smile, and
showing as he did so a range of white teeth; bushy grey whiskers; and a
skin tanned to a good standing mahogany colour. His short sturdy frame
was clothed in a slop suit of pilot cloth, and a plain cap with a heavy
peak completed the picture.

Captain Weber had entered the merchant service as a boy; had been
pressed on board a man-of-war; had seen some service, and was now part
owner of the brig he commanded. Mr Blount, his first officer, was a
man of another school. Taller, and more finely formed, the straight
Grecian nose, dark hair, and carefully trimmed whiskers, were adorned by
a naval cap having a thin strip of gold lace round it, and the short
monkey jacket showed also on the cuffs of the sleeves the same bit of
coquetry in the shape of gold lace, it and the waistcoat boasting brass
buttons.

"Where away, Smith?--point to her," replied the latter, as he too
stopped in his walk, and looked aloft.

This was a phrase lately introduced into the Royal Navy, and copied by
the old captain. In a gale, when the look-out's voice could hardly be
heard above the roar of the wind, the pointing in the given direction
supplanted the voice, and was a useful innovation. The man's hand, on
this occasion, was held straight out, pointing to leeward, and there,
sure enough, the loftier sails of a full-rigged ship could be seen,
standing in the same direction as themselves. The two seamen, shading
their eyes from the last gleam of the sun, which was sinking like a ball
of red fire into the tumbling waves, gazed at the distant sail, making
her out to be a ship lying to, perhaps a whaler.

"It's a queer thing, that a whaler should be lying to so near land,
Blount," said Captain Weber, after he had looked long and attentively in
the direction of the ship. "Hand me the glass."

At this moment the passenger, waking up from his fit of abstraction,
joined the two seamen.

"A ship lying to--and what is there strange in that?" was the question
he asked.

"Why, Captain Hughes," replied the mate (Captain Weber being too busy
with the glass to reply), "a merchantman generally makes the best of her
way from port to port. With her, time is money, while one of Her
Majesty's cruisers (God bless her!) would be jogging along under easy
sail, not caring either for time or money; but certainly not hove to.
No; yonder ship must be a whaler; but it's not often