"'And then she gave a laugh, as if some one had made her feel glad; and it was all like music and poetry, I can tell you, her laughing, and his softness, and the water smooth, and the yacht sailing along as if she enjoyed it, like a hard-worked vessel out for a holiday. "Time passed till it come on four o'clock on the afternoon of that day. There was a redness in the western heavens that betokened more wind, though the sun still stood high. Meanwhile the breeze hung steady. There was the smoke of a steamer away on our starboard quarter, and there was nothing else in sight. I took no notice of it, for smoke's not uncommon nowadays on the ocean; but whatever the vessel might be, the glances I'd take at her now and again made me see she was driving through it properly; for three-quarters of an hour after we had sighted it, the smoke was abeam, and the funnel raised up, showing that her course was something to the eastward of ours. I pointed the glass at her, and made out a yellow chimney and pole-masts--hull still below the horizon. "'Either a yacht, sir, or a Government dispatch boat--something of that kind, sir,' says I to Mr. Robinson, who was sitting near me with the lady. "He jumped up and took a look, and whilst he was working away with the telescope, the breeze comes along right out of the red sky abeam where the steamer was, with twice its former strength, roughening the blue water into hollows, and bowing down the yacht till the slope of her deck was like a roof. The crew jumped about shortening canvas, and the yacht began to snore as she felt the wind. On a sudden, and as if the steamer had only just then spied us, she altered her course by three or four points, as one could see by the swift rising of her hull, till, whilst the sun was still hanging a middling height over the sea line, you could see the whole of the vessel--a long, low craft of about one hundred and fifty tons--sweeping through the seas like an arrow, the smoke streaming black and fat from her small, yellow funnel, and her hull sinking out of sight one moment and reappearing the next in a sort of jump of the whole foaming wash, as if, by Jove, her screw would thrust her clean out of the water. "The lady looked at her with a sort of indifference; but Mr. Robinson was pale enough as he handed me the glass, and said, 'Williams, see if you know her.' "I took a look at her, and answered, 'It's hard to tell those steamers till you see their names, sir; but if she's not the Violet, belonging to General Coldsteel (of course these are false names), she's uncommonly like her. But, law bless us! how they're driving her! Why, there'll be a bust up if they don't look out. They'll blow the boilers out of her!'"