I sent a look at the vessel as he spoke, and took notice now of a number of heads along the line of the main-deck rail, watching us in a sort of ducking way, by which I mean to convey a kind of coming and going of those dusky nobs which suggested a very furtive and askant look-out. She was not above a quarter of a mile off; the wheel showed plain and the man at it kept his face upon us continuously, whilst his posture, Liliputianised as he was, betrayed extraordinary impatience and anxiety. The craft lay aback, the light wind hollowing her sails in-board and her ugly besmeared hull rolling in a manner that I suppose was rendered nauseous to the eye by her colour, her form, her frowsy, ill-cut canvas and her sheathing of sickly hue, foul with slimy weed and squalid attire of repulsive sea-growth upon the long and tender lifting and falling of the sparkling blue. There were some white letters under her counter, but though I took a swift peep at them through Finn’s telescope the shadow there and the long slant of the name towards the sternpost rendered the words indecipherable. The glass showed such heads along the rail as I could fix to be strictly in keeping with the filth and neglect you saw in the brig and with the appearance of the two men aboard of the schooner. Most of them might have passed for negroes. There were indications of extreme agitation amongst them, visible in a sort of fretful flitting, a constant looking up and around and abaft in the direction of the man at the wheel. I thought I would try my hand with the red-capped worthy, and striding up to him I sung out ‘Capitano?’ He nodded, striking himself, and then, pointing to his companion, spoke some word, but I did not understand him. By this time the crew had come shoving one another a little further aft, so that we now made a fair crowd all about the gangway; every man’s attention was fixed upon the two Portuguese. It was so odd an experience that it created a sort of licence for the crew, and Finn was satisfied to look on whilst first one and then another of our men addressed the two fellows, striving to coax some meaning out of them by addressing them in ‘pigeon’ and other forms of English, according to that odd superstition current amongst seaman that our language is most intelligible to foreigners when spoken in a manner the least intelligible to ourselves. We of the quarterdeck were beginning to grow weary of all this. The hope of being able to pick up news of the ‘Shark’ had gone out of Wilfrid’s mind long ago; the humour, moreover, of the two creatures’ appearance and apparel was now stale to him, and with folded arms he stood apart watching their gesticulations and listening to their jargon--in which it seemed to me they were telling the same story over and over and over again--with a tired air and a gloomy brow. I drew Finn apart. ‘What is the matter with them, think you?’ ‘I don’t doubt it’s a mutiny, sir.’