I do not know whether or not it was because my mind was running so much upon the pirates and upon the great treasure which I had in my keeping, but I am free to say that I liked the looks of the strange craft as little as any I had ever beheld in my life, and would have given a hundred guineas to be safe away from where I was, and with no more favor than a good open sea and a smart breeze, for the Cassandra was a first-rate sailer, and as good a ship as any the East India Company had at their docks.
As it was, we were cooped up in what was little more than a pond, and I did not like the looks of the business at all.
"What do you make her out to be, Mr. Langely?" said I, after a bit, handing him the glass.
He took a long and careful look at the stranger without speaking for a while. By-and-by he said, without taking his eye from the glass, and as though speaking half to himself, "She's making way against the current somehow or other."
"Yes," said I; "I saw that from the first. But what do you make of her?"
"I can make nothing of her," says he, after a little while.
"Neither can I," I said; "and I like her none the better for that."
Mr. Langely took his eye from the glass, and gave me a very significant look, whereby I saw that he had very much the same notion concerning the stranger that I myself entertained.
By this time there was considerable bustle aboard the Greenwich, which rode at anchor not more than a furlong or two from where we lay, and by the gathering of the men on the forecastle I could see that they had sighted the craft, as we had already done.
So the afternoon passed until six o'clock had come, against which time the stranger had almost come into open sight beyond the cape to the south, the hull alone being hidden by the low spit of sand which formed the extremity of the point.