‘What do they want, I wonder?’ said I; ‘rather a novelty for _us_ to be spoken, Finn, seeing that it has always been the other way about. Bless me! how hot it is! Pleasant to be a passenger aboard yonder craft under that sun there, if the aroma she breathes is warrant of the character of her cargo.’ A few minutes passed; the barque then shifting her helm slowly drew out, giving us a view of her length. As she did so she hauled up her main course and braced aback her fore-yards. This looked like business; for, had her intention been to hail us merely in passing, our joint rate of progress was so exceedingly slow as to render any manœuvring, such as heaving to, unnecessary. Finn and I were looking at her, waiting for the yacht to be hailed, when Crimp, who had been in the waist superintending the washing down of the decks--for he was in charge, though the captain had come up at once on hearing that there was a vessel close to us; sour old Crimp, I say, whom I had observed staring with a peculiar earnestness at the barque, came aft and said: ‘Ain’t this smell old bones?’ ‘Foul enough for ’un,’ answered Finn. ‘Dummed,’ cried Crimp, gazing intently with his cross eyes whilst his mat of beard worked slowly to the action of his jaw upon a quid as though there were something behind it that wanted to get out, ‘if I don’t believe that there craft’s the “’Liza Robbins.”’ ‘Well, and what then?’ demanded Finn. ‘Why, if so, my brother’s her skipper.’ Finn levelled his glass. He took a long look at the figure of a man who was standing on the barque’s quarter, and who was manifestly pausing until the vessel should have closed a little more yet to hail us. ‘Is your brother like you, Jacob?’ he asked, bringing his eye from the telescope. ‘Ay, werry image, only that his wision’s straight. We’re twins.’ ‘Then there ye are to the life!’ cried Finn, bursting into a laugh and pointing to the barque’s quarterdeck. Crimp rested the glass on the rail and put his sour face to it. ‘Yes,’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s ’Arry, sure enough,’ and without another word he returned to the waist and went on coolly directing the scrubbing and swabbing of the men. ‘Mr. Monson,’ said Finn, who had taken the glass from Crimp, and extending it to me as he spoke, ‘just take a view of them figures on the fo’k’sle, sir, will ’ee? There’s three of ’em standing alone close against the cathead. They ain’t blue-jackets, are they?’ But at that instant we were hailed, and I forgot Finn’s request in listening to what was said. ‘Schooner ahoy!’ ‘Hallo!’ answered Finn. ‘What schooner is that and where are you bound?’ cried the man on the barque’s quarter-deck in a voice whose sulky rasping note so exactly resembled Jacob Crimp’s when he exerted his lungs, that I observed some of our sailors staring with astonishment, as though they imagined Muffin had gone to work again.