‘Let that vessel prove what she may,’ said I, sitting down on a grating abaft the wheel close to which he was standing, ‘we appear to have the heels of her in light airs, however it may be with her in a breeze of wind.’ ‘How do you know?’ he inquired in a churchyard note. ‘Why,’ said I, ‘I was just now in the crosstrees and found her showing fair from them, whereas before breakfast she was only visible from the topgallantyard.’ He looked at me with a heavy, leaden eye, and said, ‘A plague on the wind! It has all gone; just when we want it too.’ ‘We shall have a capful anon,’ I exclaimed; ‘no need to whistle for it. Mark how it brightens down upon the sea-line yonder as that shadow floats upwards. That means wind enough to whiten this tumbling oiliness for us.’ He directed his gaze in a mechanical way towards the quarter in which I was looking, but said nothing. Miss Jennings came out of the companion. I took her hand and brought her to the grating. ‘A strange, oppressive calm,’ she cried; ‘how sickly the sunshine is! Nature looks to be in as dull a mood as we are.’ ‘Wilf,’ said I, ‘if that schooner is the “Shark,” what will you do?’ ‘What would _you_ do?’ he answered sternly, as though he imagined I quizzed him, when God knows I was in a more sober and anxious humour than I can express. ‘Well,’ said I very quietly and gravely, ‘when I got my yacht within reach of her glasses, if I could manage it, I should signal that I wanted to speak her.’ ‘Quite right; that’s what I shall do,’ said he. ‘But after!’ I exclaimed. ‘After what?’ he cried. ‘Why, confound it, Wilf, suppose she makes no response, holds on all, as we say at sea, and bowls along without taking the slightest notice of us.’ He approached me close, laid his great hand upon my shoulder and thrust his long arm forth straight as a handspike pointing to the forecastle gun. ‘_There’s_ my answer to that,’ he cried in my ear in a voice as disagreeable as the sound of a saw with irritability; ‘you wished me to strike it down into the hold, d’ye remember? you were for ridiculing it from the moment of your catching sight of it; yet without that messenger to deliver my mind what answer would there be to the question you have just now put? Oh my God,’ he suddenly cried, smiting his forehead, ‘I feel as if I shall go mad.’