‘Describe her? ’Course I will,’ answered the old chap, and forthwith he gave us a sailorly picture of a yacht apparently of the burthen of the ‘Shark’: a fore and aft schooner, a long, low, black, handsome vessel, loftily rigged even for a craft of her kind. She passed within a mile and a half of the ‘Wanderer’; it was about eight o’clock in the morning, the sunshine bright, the wind north-east, a pleasant air. I asked Puncheon if he examined her with his glass? ‘Examine her through my glass? Ay, that I did,’ he answered in his hilarious way. ‘I see some figures aboard aft. No lady. No, ne’er a hint of a female garment. Happen if there was women they was still abed, seeing how young the morn was for females as goes to sea for pleasure. I took notice of a tall gent in a white cap with a naval peak and a white jacket.’ That was about as much as he could tell us, and so saying he regaled himself with a hearty laugh. Finn questioned him as one sailor would another on points of the yacht’s furniture aloft, but the old fellow could only speak generally of the impression left upon him. Wilfrid’s face was flushed with excitement. ‘Finn,’ he exclaimed, ‘what do you think?’ ‘Why, your honour,’ said the man deliberately, ‘putting two and two together, and totalling up all sarcumstances of rig, haspect, time and place, I don’t doubt that the schooner-yacht Captain Puncheon here fell in with was the “Shark.”’ Puncheon rose. ‘Empty this bottle,’ cried Wilfrid to him. ‘By heaven, man, the news you give me does me good, though!’ The old chap filled up, grinning merrily. ‘Gents,’ he cried, holding the foaming glass aloft and looking at it with one eye closed, ‘your errand’s an honest one, I’m sure, and so here’s success to it. The craft I fell in with has got legs, mind ye. Yes, by thunder, ha! ha! ha! she’s got legs, gents, and’ll require all the catching I expects your honours have stomachs for. ’Tain’t to be done in the inside of a month, he! he! he! and so I tells ye. See her slipping through it under her square sail! God bless my body and soul, ’twas like the shadow of a cloud running ower the waters. But give yourselves a long course, gents all, and you’ve got a beauty here as must lay her aboard--in time, ha! ha! ha! Your honours, my respects to you.’ Down went the wine and up he got, pulling his hat to his ears and stepping with a deep sea roll up the companion ladder. We followed him to the gangway. ‘Is there nothing more to ask, Charles?’ cried Wilfrid. But Puncheon had given us all he had to tell, and though I could have wished him to hint at something distinctive in the vessel’s hull, such as her figure-head or any other point of the like kind in which the ‘Shark’ might differ from vessels of her build and appearance, yet there was the strongest possible reason to suppose that the craft he reported was Lord Winterton’s schooner, with Lady Monson and Colonel Hope-Kennedy on board.