From the moment the ship in sight was reported expectation aboard the Aurora sprang and grew. Was she the Minorca? She was undoubtedly square-rigged, but the lenses of the comparatively feeble telescopes of those days could not determine before it fell dusk, whether she was rigged aft with square yards or merely with the mizzen and gaff topsail which made the Minorca a barque.
The Admiral was restless; he paced the deck with unwearied legs, and when the sail ahead had hove her canvas into view, he sent endless searchings of her through his telescope, but never could arrive at an opinion. Captain Acton was self-possessed, and his manner was marked by contemplation as though the possibilities the ship in sight suggested filled him with earnest and bewildering considerations.
Lucy was of opinion that the ship must prove the Minorca. She well understood that the two vessels could not be far asunder, and quite rationally concluded that the sail ahead was the barque. It would have needed, however, a keener gaze than either Captain Acton or the Admiral was capable of bringing to bear, to penetrate to the girl's thoughts. Whilst the distant vessel leaned like a small orange flame gently blown sideways by the wind upon the early evening purple of the horizon, Lucy would overhang the rail with her brooding, beautiful eyes dwelling upon that far-off vision, and the expression of her face was in these intervals of motionless posture and steadfast regard, as though she was asleep and dreamt, and that her dream was partly sweet and partly vexing and bitter, so that her whole look was that of one who slumbers, through whose sealed lids a vision of sleep slides to the heart to trouble its pulse.
Captain Weaver believed that the vessel was the Minorca: because, first, she carried royals; next, because she happened to be where she was; third, the leisureliness with which the Aurora rose her seemed to prove that her pace was that of the barque. But the dusk drew round; the gloom of night came along in that thickness of shadow which under such heights as the Aurora was then sailing, seemed swift to persons accustomed to the northern twilights. And at the hour in which the shades of the coming night had with their viewless fingers effaced the stranger from the sight of the Aurora, and shaken some stars into their places, the sail had been risen by the Aurora, till on the heave of the swell her hull to the height of her bulwarks from the edge of the sea was visible. And then she was steeped in darkness.
The moon was without power until shortly after midnight; her light silvered the sails of the ship ahead, and she grew out of the gloom into a fairy-like fantasy that might have been some symmetrical form of moon-touched mist fleeting down the wind, or some snow-robed height whose base lay behind the horizon.
The Admiral was on deck, and so was Captain Acton, and Captain Weaver had also stepped out of the deck-house to take a look round. The stranger was now sufficiently near to be determinable by the glass even in moonshine; and so soon as she sprang into being under the magical flourish of the wand of the moon, it was known for a surety that she was not the Minorca. She was square-rigged aft, and made a big, broad cloud as she rolled along under topgallant, topmast, and lower stun-sails. The breeze that had blown throughout the day still blew, and the circumstance of the stranger having kept ahead of the Aurora for many hours was proof of her nimble keel.
"She sails faster than the Minorca, gentlemen," said Captain Weaver.
"She has the appearance of a frigate," said Captain Acton, working away at her with his glass.
"Is that your opinion, sir?" Captain Weaver asked the Admiral.
After a pause, during which he carefully scrutinised the vessel, "She has every appearance of being a frigate," the Admiral answered.