Grace was then handed into the boat--a ticklish business to the eyes of a landsman, but performed with amazing despatch and ease by the rough seaman who passed her over and received her. I followed, watching my chance, and in a few moments the oars were out and the boat making for the yacht, that lay within musket shot. She was rolling, however, faster and so much more heavily than the big iron ship, that the job of getting on board her was heightened into a kind of peril. I should never have imagined merely by looking down on the water from the height of the _Carthusian's_ rail how strong was the Atlantic surge--blue, summer-like and beautiful with its lacery of froth, as it showed from the altitude of the ship's deck. It came to Grace being lifted bodily over the side by a couple of the yachtsman, who each grasped her hand. I was similarly helped up, and was not a little thankful to find ourselves safe on the solid deck of the steamer after the egg-shell-like tossing of the ship's quarter-boat alongside. We were received by the captain of the yacht, a fellow with a face that reminded me somewhat of Caudel, of a countenance and bearing much too sailorly to be rendered ridiculous by his livery of gold band and buttons. But before I could address him old Parsons hailed to give him the name of the _Carthusian_ and to request him to report the ship, and he ran on to the bridge to answer. I could look at nothing just then but the ship. Of all sea pieces I never remember the like of that for beauty. We were to leeward of her, and she showed us the milk-white bosoms of her sails, that flashed out in silver brilliance to the sunlight through sheer force of the contrast of the vivid red of her water-line as it was lifted out of the yeast and then plunged again by the rolling of the craft. Large soft clouds resembling puffs of steam sailed over her waving mast-heads, where a gilt vane glowed like a streak of fire against the blue of the sky between the clouds. A full-rigged ship never looks more majestic I think than when she is hove to under all plain sail, that is, when all canvas but stun'sails is piled upon her and her main topsail is to the mast, with the great main course hauled up to the yard and windily swaying in festoons. She is then like a noble mare reined in; her very hawse pipes seem to grow large like the nostrils of some nervous creature impatiently sniffing the air; she bows the sea as though informed with a spirit of fire that maddens her to leap the surge, and to rush forward once more in music and in thunder, in giddy shearing and in long floating plunges on the wings of the wind. Never does a ship show so much as a thing of life as when she is thus restrained.