“Perhaps we shall think the same of these some five or six years hence.”

“Well, that’s natur’, I must confess.  It’s amazing how the last v’yge hangs in a man’s memory, and how little we think of the present!  I suppose the Lord made us all of this disposition, for it’s sartain we all manifest it.  Come, bear a hand Neb, on that fore-yard, and let us see the length of the stun-sail boom.”

But, Neb, contrary to his habits, stood upright on the yard, holding on by the lift, and looking over the weather leach of the top-sail, apparently at some object that either was just then visible, or which had just before been visible.

“What is it?” cried Marble, struck with the black’s attitude and manner.  “What d’ye see?”

“I don’t see him now, sir; nuttin’ now; but dere was a ship.”

“Where-away?” I demanded.

“Off, here, Masser Mile—­larboard bow, well forrard; look sharp and soon see him, yourself, sir.”

Sharp enough we did look, all hands of us on deck, and, in less than a minute, we caught a pretty good view of the stranger from the forecastle.  He might have been visible to us half a minute, in one of those momentary openings in the mist, that were constantly occurring, and which enabled the eye to command a range around the ship of half a mile, losing it again, however, almost as soon as it was obtained.  Notwithstanding the distance of time, I can perfectly recall the appearance of that vessel, seen as she was, for a moment only, and seen too so unexpectedly.  It was a frigate, as frigates then were; or a ship of that medium size between a heavy sloop-of-war and a two-decker, which, perhaps, offers the greatest proportions for activity and force.  We plainly saw her cream-coloured, or as it is more usual to term it, her yellow streak, dotted with fourteen ports, including the bridle, and gleaming brightly in contrast to the dark and glistening hull, over which the mist and the spray of the ocean cast a species of sombre lustre.  The stranger was under his three top-sails, spanker and jib, each of the former sails being double reefed.  His courses were in the brails.  As the wind did not blow hard enough to bring a vessel of any size to more than one reef, even on a bow-line, this short canvass proved that the frigate was on her cruising ground, and was roaming about in quest of anything that might offer.  This was just the canvass to give a cruiser a wicked look, since it denoted a lazy preparation, which might, in an instant, be improved into mischief.  As all cruising vessels, when on their stations doing nothing, reef at night, and the hour was still early, it was possible we had made this ship before her captain, or first-lieutenant, had made his appearance on deck.  There she was, at all events, dark, lustrous, fair in her proportions, her yards looming square and symmetrical, her canvass damp, but stout and new, the copper bright as a tea-kettle, resembling a new cent, her hammock-cloths with the undress appearance this part of a vessel of war usually offers at night, and her quarter-deck and forecastle guns frowning through the lanyards of her lower rigging like so many slumbering bull-dogs muzzled in their kennels.