It was now blowing a very light air of wind, yet there was weight enough in it to hold steady the canvas of the Portuguese brig even to the lifting of her foresail, lumpish as those cloths were made by the boom that spread the clews, and one saw by the wake of her that she was stirring through it at a pace to render the pursuit of the boat long and possibly hopeless, if the crew refused to back their yards for the two follows. The boat was a fat, tub-like fabric, apparently heavy for her size, and the rowers pulled with such alternate heat and passion, that though they made the water buzz and foam about the bows, their motion was as erratic--first to right, then to left, then a spasmodic heave round as though they meant to return to us--as the course of a fly climbing a pane of glass. The whole picture was thrown out strong and clear by the background of sparkling azure water melting into a sort of trembling faintness off the horizon to above the height of the brig’s masts against the sky, which from there ran up in a tint of deepening blue till it whitened out into glory round about the sun. The boat rose and fell upon the long ocean heave, splashed wildly forwards by the two rowers, who again and again would turn their mahogany-coloured faces over their shoulders to yell to the withdrawing vessel. The brig’s crew stood in a crowd aft watching, most of them, as the glass disclosed, in a loafing, lounging posture, their bare arms folded or their hands sunk in their breeches-pockets, whilst one or another occasionally pointed at us or the boat with a theatrical attitude of leaning back as he did so that made one fancy one could hear the laughter or the curses which attended these gestures. On high rustily glittered the amazing old weathercock or dog-vane of the saint in his boat, from which would leap with pendulum regularity a dull flame sunwards, timing a like kind of fire which flashed wet from the dirty yellow and sickly green of the hull, as her side rolled streaming to the noon-tide blaze. ‘I say, Wilfrid,’ cried I, ‘it doesn’t seem as if those chaps meant to let that boat approach them.’ ‘What’s to be done?’ he exclaimed. I looked at Finn. ‘If they don’t pick those two fellows up,’ said I, ‘_we_ shall have to do so, that’s cocksure. But they are a kind of beauties whose room is better than their company, I think, as the crew would find out when we approached the equinoctial waters.’ ‘Ay, sir,’ cried Finn, ‘it would never do to have the likes o’ them aboard, your honour,’ addressing Sir Wilfrid. ‘No, no, the brig must pick ’em up. Dang their cruel hearts! I never seed a scurvier trick played at sea in all my days.’ ‘But what’s to be done?’ cried Wilfrid impatiently and irritably. ‘Could one of our boats overhaul the brig and put the two fellows aboard her?’ Finn shook his head.