and dodging round their elders in their play, filling the rich, sweet, morning air with the music of their voices. There was a soft, seething sound over the side as the ship slid gently along, accompanied by a constant iridescent gleam and flash of the tiny bubbles that slipped along the bends and vanished at last in the smooth, oil-like wake with its tiny whirlpools; and at frequent intervals a shoal of flying-fish would spark out from under the bows and go skimming and glittering away to port or starboard, like a shower of brand-new silver dollars hove broadcast by the hand of old Father Neptune himself. The cuddy breakfast was fairly under way, and a great clattering of cups and saucers, knives and forks, and the hum of lively conversation, accompanied by sundry savoury odours, came floating up through the open skylights, when the chief mate's eye happened to be attracted toward a gasket, streaming loose like an Irish pennant from the fore topgallant yard, and he sang out to one of the ordinary seamen to jump aloft and put it right. The fellow made his way up the ratlines with extreme deliberation--for, indeed, a journey aloft in such scorching heat was no joke--made up the loose gasket, and was in the very act of swinging himself off the yard when, happening to be watching him, I saw him suddenly pause and stiffen into an attitude of attention as, holding on to the jackstay with one hand, he flung the other up to his forehead and peered ahead under the sharp of it. For a full minute he stood thus; then, twisting his body until he faced aft, he hailed:
"On deck there!"
"Hillo!" answered the mate.
"There's a biggish ship away out yonder, sir," reported the man, "under her three taups'ls and fore topmast staysail; and by the way that she comes to and falls off again I'd say that she was hove-to."
"How far off is she?" demanded the mate.
"'Bout a dozen mile, I reckon, sir," answered the man.
"Um!" remarked the mate, as much to himself as to me, it seemed. "She is probably a whaler on the lookout for `fish'. I believe they sometimes meet with rare streaks of luck just about here. All right," he added, hailing the man aloft; "you can come down."
Shortly afterward we made out the stranger's upper spars from the deck; and from the rapidity with which we raised them it soon became apparent that, if she had really been hove-to when first seen, she had soon filled away, and was now standing in our direction. By five bells she was hull-up; and while the skipper and mate were standing together eyeing her from the break of the poop--the latter with the ship's telescope at his eye--I saw the ensign of the stranger float out over her rail and go creeping up to her gaff-end.
"There goes her ensign, sir," I shouted to the mate, who responded by remarking dryly:
"Yes; I see it." Then, turning to the skipper, he said:
"There's something wrong aboard that craft, sir; they've just hoisted their ensign, jack downward!" This, it may be explained to the uninitiated, is a signal of distress.
"The dickens they have!" exclaimed the skipper. "Just let me have a look at her, Mr Bryce."
The mate handed over the telescope, and the skipper raised it to his eye, adjusting the focus to his sight.
"Ay, you are quite right," he agreed, with his eye still peering through the tube. "The jack's downward, right enough. Wonder what's wrong aboard of her? her hull and spars seem to be all right, and I don't see any water pouring from her scuppers, as there would be if she had sprung a leak and the hands were working at the pumps. Well, we shall soon know, I suppose. Let our own ensign be hoisted in acknowledgment, Mr Bryce."
"Ay, ay, sir," answered the mate. "Troubridge,"--to me--"jump aft and run our ensign up to the peak, will ye?"
I went aft to the flag locker, drew out the big ensign, bent it on to the halyards, and ran it up to the gaff-end, where there was just wind enough to blow it out and make it distinguishable for what it was.
The news that the stranger in sight was flying a signal of distress soon spread among the passengers, and in a few minutes every telescope in the cuddy was upon the poop and being eagerly focused upon the approaching vessel, which had by this time revealed herself as a full-rigged ship of some 800 tons measurement, of wholesome, motherly build, but certainly not a whaler, as could be seen by the model of the boats which she carried, and by the absence of certain characteristics which proclaim the whaler, and are apparent almost from the moment when
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