A Middy in Command: A Tale of the Slave Squadron

The first faint pallor of the coming dawn was insidiously extending along the horizon ahead as H.M. gun-brig Shark —the latest addition to the slave-squadron—slowly surged ahead over the almost oil-smooth sea, under the influence of a languid air breathing out from the south-east. She was heading in for the mouth of the Congo, which was about forty miles distant, according to the master’s reckoning.
The night had been somewhat squally, and the royals and topgallant-sails were stowed; but the weather was now clearing, and as “three bells” chimed out musically upon the clammy morning air, Mr Seaton, the first lieutenant, who was the officer of the watch, having first scanned the heavens attentively, gave orders to loose and set again the light upper canvas.
By the time that the men aloft had cast off the gaskets that confined the topgallant-sails to the yards, the dawn—which comes with startling rapidity in those latitudes—had risen high into the sky ahead, and spread well along the horizon to north and south, causing the stars to fade and disappear, one after another, until only a few of the brightest remained twinkling low down in the west.
As I wheeled at the stern-grating in my monotonous promenade of the lee side of the quarter-deck, a hail came down from aloft—
“Sail ho! two of ’em, sir, broad on the lee beam. Look as if they were standin’ out from the land.”
“What are they like? Can you make out their rig?” demanded the first luff, as he halted and directed his gaze aloft at the man on the main-royal-yard, who, half-way out to the yard-arm, was balancing himself upon the foot-rope, and steadying himself with one hand upon the yard as he gazed away to leeward under the shade of the other.
“I can’t make out very much, sir,” replied the man. “They’re too far off; but one looks like a schooner, and t’other like a brig.”
“And they are heading out from the land, you say?” demanded the lieutenant.
“Looks like it, sir,” answered the man; “but, as I was sayin’, they’re a long way off; and it’s a bit thick down to leeward there, so—”