‘Hallo, Mr. Smallridge,’ said I, as I stepped over the rail out of the head, addressing the boatswain, who was superintending the work of a couple of hands slung over the bow, ‘what have we yonder?’ and I sent my gaze at a sail I had now for the first time caught sight of that was hovering down upon our port quarter some two or three miles distant.
‘A brig, sir, I believe,’ he answered; ‘she was in sight much about the same place at daybreak. There’s been a little air of wind, but it’s failing, I doubt.’
‘Making way for something to follow, I fancy?’ said I, casting a look round the horizon.
‘Ay,’ he answered; ‘that muck’s a-drawing up, and there’ll be thunder in it too, if my corns speaks right. Niver had no such aching in my toes as this morning since last Toosday was two year, when we fell in off the Hope with the ugliest thunderstorm that I can remember south of the heequator. When my corns begins to squirm I always know that thunder ain’t fur off.’
‘Well, thunder or no thunder,’ said I, ‘I hope there’s to come wind enough in the wake of all this to blow us along. We shall be having to call it sixty days to the Line, bo’sun, if we don’t mind our eye;’ and giving him a friendly nod, I made my way to my cabin to finish dressing.
The gloomy appearance continued all the morning without the least change. The wind fell dead; and a prodigious hush overhung the sea, a stillness that grew absolutely overwhelming to the fancy, if you gave your mind to it, and stood watching the heave of the swell running in ugly green heaps without a sound. Noises were curiously distinct. The voice of a man hailing the forecastle from the foretopmast cross-trees sounded on the poop as though he had called from the maintop. A laugh from near the wheel had a startlingly near note, though it came to you along the whole length of the after-deck. The water brimming to the channels alongside to the stoop of the hull sent the oddest hollowest sobbing tone into the air, as though some monster were strangling alongside. Halliards had been let go and sails clewed up and hauled down, and the Countess Ida lay with something of a naked look as she wallowed with the clumsiness of a wide-beamed ship under topsails and fore course; and all the rest of the square canvas, saving the royals and mizzen topgallant-sail, which were furled, swinging in and out festooned by the grip of the gear.
By noon the sail that I had noticed early that morning had neared us in some insensible fashion till she hung something more than a mile away off the quarter as before. I had several times examined her with the telescope and was not a little impressed by her appearance. She was a brig of about two hundred and sixty tons; a most beautiful and perfect model, indeed, with a clipper lift of bow and a knife-like cutwater and a long wonderfully graceful arching sweep of side rounding into the very perfection of a run. Her copper came high, and was very clean, as though she were fresh from port. Her masts were singularly lofty for her size, both of them tapering away into skysail poles with yards across; but she had furled all canvas down to her two topsails and foresail, and lay rolling heavily, lifting her symmetrical fabric to the height of the swell, when she would be hove out against the ugly sulky background in such keen relief that her rigging glanced like hairs as it came from the mastheads to the channels, with a white, odd, almost ghastly stare in her canvas that was brilliant as cotton; then down she would sink behind some sullen almost livid peak till she was hidden to the reef-band of her fore-course.
Throughout the morning I had observed Captain Keeling somewhat restlessly examining her; that is to say, he would send looks enough at her through his binocular glass to suggest that he found something unusual, perhaps disturbing, in her appearance. There were no sights to be had, though the old fellow and his two mates stood about the deck, sextants in hands, occasionally lifting their eyes to that part of the sky where the sun was supposed to be. Observing Mr. Prance at the rail, steadfastly observing the brig down upon the quarter, I went up to him.
‘Pray what do you find in that craft yonder, Mr. Prance, to interest you? The skipper does not seem able to keep his glass off her.’
‘What do you see, Mr. Dugdale?’ he answered, viewing me out of the corners of his eyes without turning his head. ‘Come, you have been a sailor. What is your notion of her?’