“What’s the matter?” said I.
“Coom dis vay, Mr. Fielding, und you see for yourself.”
He crossed the deck. I followed him. He put the telescope into my hands and leveled a square fat forefinger at the sail that was now at no great distance. I viewed the vessel through the glass, but saw nothing remarkable. She was a motherly tub of a ship, with big topsails and short topgallant masts, and a cask-like roll in the sway of her whole fabric as the silver blue undulations took her.
“Tunder of God?” cried he in Dutch. “Lok, Mr. Fielding, how her yards vhas braced.”
And now, indeed, I beheld what Jack might fairly call a miraculous sight. The wind, as I have said, was off our starboard bow, and we were, therefore, braced up on what is termed the starboard tack; but the stranger that was coming along was also braced up on the starboard tack, showing that she, like ourselves, had the wind on her starboard bow. For what did our two postures signify? This—that the wind with us was directly west-southwest, while the wind with the stranger was directly east-northeast. Here, then, were two vessels within a couple of miles of each other, so heading that one would pass the other within a biscuit-toss; here, I say, were two vessels steering in exactly opposite directions, but each braced up on the same tack, and each with the wind off the same bow!
“May der toyfell seize me if I like him!” exclaimed Bol, looking aloft at our canvas and then around the sea.
The sailors at work about the deck stared aloft and then at the approaching ship. They bit hard upon the tobacco in their cheeks. One of the Dutchmen called to an English seaman in the fore rigging:
“Dis vhas der ocean of Kingdom Coom. Der anchells vhas not far off vhen efery schip hov a vindt for himself.”
The English sailor, with an uneasy motion of his body, swang off the rigging to spit clear into the sea.