'There's nothing but weather for apparitions to predict at sea,' said I.
'That wet-faced ghost of last night,' said he, 'reminds me of Lord Byron's tale of a certain captain; his brother, who was in India, entered his cabin in mid-ocean, and lay down in his bunk; when the captain awoke he found his blankets wet through.'
'Perhaps he forgot to close his cabin window,' said I.
'Anyhow,' said Mr. Owen, 'Captain Kidd afterwards discovered that his brother was drowned at that exact hour of the night.'
'This is not nice talk for such a morning as this,' said I, chilled by a sudden return of the uneasy superstitious feeling.
'There's a fine sight coming along yonder,' cried out Captain Burke just then, and he pointed over the weather bow with the telescope he had been looking through.
I crossed the deck and saw two large stars of light on the sea-line almost directly ahead. Even whilst I gazed they sensibly enlarged. The sun at this time was hanging on the left of them, and his light was on the water between, flashing every headlong ridge into silver, and silvering the sea-smoke till it flew down the wind with the gleam of a silken veil; and beyond this rushing splendour of silver sea, softened here and there by the shadows of the sailing clouds, hung those two glowing stars, steady as though they were fixed in the heavens.
Captain Burke let fall the glass from his eye and said to Mr. Owen, 'An ocean race.'
'Yachts?' said the doctor.
'Bless me no. Clippers rushing it for a wager. If this was the other end of the year they'd probably prove tea-ships. It should be a fine sight,' he cried, anticipation and spirit working his face into something of its old merry, eager look.