‘Where?’ she cried, with her manner full of fever on the instant. I pointed. ‘Oh,’ she exclaimed, bringing her hands together, ‘if it should be the Indiaman!’
But the captain was walking aft, and it was time to salute him.
‘Good morning, sir,’ I said as I approached him with Miss Temple at my side. ‘We have paused a moment to admire this very beautiful morning. I perceive a sail right ahead, captain.’
It was a part of his destiny, I suppose, that he should stare hard at those who accosted him before answering. He carried his unwinking dead black eye from my companion to me, and then stepped out of the shell of his mood of meditation as a bird might be hatched.
‘Hope you slept pretty comfortably?’
‘Yes; I passed a good night; and I am happy to know that Miss Temple rested well.’
‘Which way is that ship going?’ cried the girl, whose cheeks were flushed with impatience.
‘She is not a ship, mem,’ he answered; ‘she is seemingly a big boat that’s blowing along the same road as ourselves under a lug.’
The telescope lay on the skylight, and I pointed it. Sure enough, the sail was no ship, as I had first imagined, though the white square hovering upon the horizon exactly resembled the canvas of a large craft slowly climbing up the sea. I could readily distinguish a boat, apparently a ship’s longboat, running before the wind under a lugsail; but she was as yet too distant to enable me to make out the figures of people aboard, considerable as were the magnifying powers of the glass I levelled at her.
‘Only a boat?’ cried Miss Temple, in accents of keen disappointment.