Yesterday afternoon a sail was sighted from the fore-sky-sail-yard, and at once threw everybody into tumult of excitement. Truly, a long time had passed since we had beheld a vessel of any sort, for the last time that we saw anything fashioned by man’s hand was seven weeks ago, off the Horn. We beat this record on our first voyage, however, when sixty-five days passed without our sighting a vessel. The ship “I. F. Chapman,” however, arrived at New York from Manila shortly before we sailed, having been at sea one hundred and twenty-five days, and during all that time not a single craft of any description sailed into her ken! At five o’clock the upper sails of our new friend were in sight from the deck, and I walked to the break of the poop, where the mate was, to ask his opinion of her. He was extremely pompous, and talked with such assurance that you would suppose he had just come off the stranger. She had not risen to her upper topsails when Mr. Goggins said, “Ho! I know ’er; she’s a barkentine that trades between San Francisco and the Hawaiian Islands!” (I have never met a captain or mate who said Sandwich Islands.) This was to exhibit his infinite knowledge of the Pacific coast. Now, when hull down, I make it a rule never to contradict a sailor when he gives an opinion as to how a square-rigger is sailing, whether on or off the wind, or what her precise rig is; few objects are more puzzling, even to an experienced eye. But on this occasion I had a pair of very excellent glasses on the vessel, and suggested that she was either a bark or a ship steering by the wind. “Naw, naw,” shouted the mate, with a backward sweep of his arm; “she’s a barkentine, a-runnin’ free.” An hour later it proved to be a British ship close-hauled on the port tack, standing to the eastward. The mate was overwhelmed with chagrin, but his cup of misery was not yet full, for when the old man went on deck last night at ten, the moon being very bright, he asked him whether the ship was still in sight, to which the mate answered, “She’s not, sir.” “Then what’s that?” asked the skipper, pointing under the spanker. There, on the quarter, dim, but in plain view, was the handsome stranger, and she had gone around on our tack.