He walked to a bed of flowers at which an under-gardener was at work, and said to the man: "Have you good eyes?"
"I can see a good bit, your honour."
"Do you know the Minorca?"
"Oh yes, sir."
"Could you distinguish her if she's in the Harbour at this distance?"
"Why, sartinly, your honour," answered the man, looking at the Admiral.
"Then tell me if you see her," and the Admiral watched him with such an expression of face as he might have looked with at a falling barometer in seas distinguished for cyclones and typhoons.
The gardener gazed and gazed, and his intent regard crumpled his brow, for he seemed ambitious to be able to say he could see the ship. After a considerable pause, during a portion of which the man sheltered his eyes with his hand, he exclaimed: "If the Minorca's a three-masted vessel, square rigged forward, and fore-and-aft rigged on the mizzen-mast, then all that I can say is, your honour, she ain't among that shipping down there."
Without speech the Admiral walked away swiftly on the stout staff he was used to carry, striking the sward with it till you witnessed the energy of his thoughts with each blow, and, entering the hall of Old Harbour House, took down from its brackets a very handsome, and for those times, powerful telescope with which he returned to the place he had left, where he might obtain the best view of the Harbour that was to be got from the grounds of the mansion.
He levelled the tubes at the shipping, but witnessed no signs of the Minorca. He was amazed. The glass sank in his hand, and he rubbed his naked eye and fastened it again upon the Harbour. The vessel was to sail at half-past twelve, and it was now about a quarter past ten, and the Minorca was gone. The old gentleman took aim with his glass at the little breadth of sea that was in sight, in a hopeless way conceiving that a sail, invisible to his bare vision, might leap into the lenses out of the distant blue recess, and proclaim herself to his nautical eye as the ship that was gone. Nothing was in sight.