At nine o’clock this morning I sighted a vessel’s upper canvas ahead, far down in the southwest; she seemed to be a bark, and as such I reported her to the skipper. The breeze was from the eastward and blowing fresh, so that every sail was drawing to the utmost, and we were doing nearly eleven knots at the time. Slowly we drew up on the vessel, slowly but certainly, and at eleven o’clock she proved to be a ship, and we concluded that she was one of the Englishmen which sailed a week ahead of us: the “Balclutha,” from London, the “Merioneth,” from Swansea, and the “Peleus,” from Hamburg, all bound to San Francisco, and the “Annesley,” from Cardiff for Portland, Oregon. It was quite probable that we would fall in with each other hereabouts. In spite of the power of our glasses, however, it was impossible to tell for a long while whether she was a Yankee or a Britisher, until all at once she yawed, when the sun reflected from her sails showed that they were of cotton, so that the chances were in favor of her hailing from the States. We paid no further attention to her, though, till after dinner, when, by that time having raised her hull out of the water, we perceived that she carried a stunsail on the starboard side! Here was a spectacle as unusual as a blue moon in these days of scanty rigs and short crews! Still, in spite of her extra cloths, we overhauled her, and soon made the additional discovery that, like ourselves, she crossed three sky-sail-yards. (What a graceful, slender look they give to a vessel!) Captain Scruggs at this instant emerged from the cabin with his ancient, feeble-looking, clattering, brass telescope under his arm, levelled it at the flying stranger, bracing the long, tottering tubes against the top-gallant-backstays, gazed at her for a full minute, and announced her name,--the “Judas Dowes.” Now, this vessel sailed from New York for San Diego six days before we did, and though she has a fine record as a fast sailer, lo! we have overhauled her on the fortieth day. I am under the impression that Captains Scruggs and Platt had a wager as to who would pass the equator first; and as the “Dowes” undoubtedly crossed ahead of us, our skipper was in quite a bad humor when he found who the stranger was. We asked him if he couldn’t be mistaken, to which he disdainfully answered, “Mistaken? Of course not; wasn’t I master of her four years before I took the ‘Hosea Higgins’?” “Does Platt recognize us, do you suppose?” I asked him then. “Most certainly he does,” testily replied the captain; “who wouldn’t know them upper topsails?” And in truth the “Higgins” could be picked out among a score of other vessels simply by her long topmasts. There is every prospect of passing the “Judas Dowes” in the night, for at the moment, 4 +P.M.+, we cannot be more than seven or eight miles apart.