bright white haze was softening out the horizon already, and here and there the egg of a cloud could be seen to break off the sky to windward, all of which would be better known afloat than here. The truth was, I was on the point of tripping my anchor to hurry down and get aboard again, but, on standing up, the head of a peak fell below the sail I had noticed in the distance, and, seeing she loomed large on the stretch of water, I pretty soon found she must be a ship of the line. The telegraph over the Alarm House was hard at work again, so I e'en took down my glass and cleaned it to have a better sight, during which I caught sight, for a minute, of some soldier officer or other on horseback, with a mounted red-coat behind him, riding hastily up the gully a good bit from my back, till they were round the red piece of crag, turning at times as if to watch the vessel. Though I couldn't have a better spy at him for want of my glass, I had no doubt he was the Governor himself, for the sentries in the distance took no note of him. There was nobody else visible at the time, and the said cliff stood fair up like a look-out place, so as to shut them out as they went higher. Once or twice after, I fancied I made out a man's head or two lower down the gully than the cliff was; which, it occurred to me, might possibly be the botanists, as they called themselves, busy finding out how long St Helena had been an island: however, I soon turned the glass before me upon the ship, by this time right opposite the ragged opening of Prosperous Bay, and heading well up about fourteen miles or so off the coast, as I reckoned, to make James Town harbour. The moment I had the sight of the glass right for her--though you'd have thought she stood still on the smooth soft blue water--I could see her whole beam rise off the swells before me, from the dark side and white band, checkered with a double row of ports, to the hamper of her lofty spars, and the sails braced slant to the breeze; the foam gleaming under her high bows, and her wake running aft in the heave of the sea. She was evidently a seventy-four: I fanced I could make out her men's faces peering over the yards toward the island, as they thought of "Boneypart;" a white rear-admiral's flag was at the mizen-royal-masthead, leaving no doubt she was the Conqueror at last, with Admiral Plampin, and, in a day or two at farthest, the Hebe would be bound for India.