"A deuced sight _below_ the mark, rather!" said I, walking aft again, where Westwood kept still looking out for the black dot. "You'll see it nearer, now, Ned," said he; "more like a negro's head, or his hand, than a bit of wood--eh?" "Curious!" I said; "it lies well up for our beam, still--_'spite_ of the breeze. Must be a shark's back-fin, I think, making for convoy." In ten minutes longer, the light swell in the distance gave it a lift up fair into the moonshine; it gleamed for a moment, and then seemed to roll across into the blue glimmer of the sea. "By Jove, Collins," said Westwood, gazing eagerly at it, "'tis more like a bottle, to _my_ sight!" We walked back and forward, looking each time over the taffrail, till at length the affair in question could be seen dipping and creeping ahead in the smooth shining wash of the surface, just like to go bobbing across our bows and be missed to windward. "Crossing our hause I _do_ declare!-- Hanged if _that_ ain't fore-reaching on us, with a witness!" exclaimed the two of us together: "and a _bottle_ it _is!_" said Westwood. I slipped down the poop-stair, and along to the forecastle, where I told Jacobs; when two or three of the men went out on the martingale-stays, with the bight of a line and a couple of blocks in it, ready to throw round this said floating oddity, and haul it alongside as it surged past. Shortly after we had it safe in our hands; a square-built old Dutchman it was, tight corked, with a red rag round the neck, and crusted over with salt--almost like one of Vanderdecken's messages home, coming up as it did from the wide glittering sea, of a tropical moonlight night, nine weeks or so after leaving land. The men who had got it seemed afraid of their prize, so Westwood and I had no difficulty in smuggling it away below to our berth, where we both sat down on a locker and looked at one another. "What poor devil hove this overboard, I wonder, now," said he; "I daresay it may have knocked about, God knows how long, since _his_ affair was settled." "Why, for that matter, Westwood," replied I, "I fancy it's much more important to find there's a strong easterly current hereabouts just now!"[13] Here Westwood got a cork-screw, and pulled out the cork with a true parson-like gravity: as we had expected, there was a paper tacked to it, crumpled up and scrawled over in what we could only suppose was _blood_.