"She is a large ship--a line-of-battle ship, I suspect," he observed. "Looks like one," said Stubbs. "She'll look like something else by-and-by." The rest of the officers had now joined us except Mr Randolph, who had the middle watch. We were all watching the strangers together. Now, as we sank down into the hollow, the masses of spray which blew off from the huge sea uprising between us and them, hid them from our sight. Some differed with the captain as to the size of the largest ship. One or two thought that she was an Indiaman. However, she was still so distant, and in the grey dawn so misty-looking and indistinct, that it was difficult to decide the question. The captain himself was not certain. "However, we shall soon be able to settle the matter," he observed, as the _Barbara_, now on the summit of a mountain billow, was about to glide down the steep incline. Down, down, we went--it seemed that we should never be able to climb the opposite height. We were all looking out for the strangers, expecting to settle the disputed point. "Where are they?" burst from the lips of all of us. "Where, where?" We looked, we rubbed our eyes--no sail was in sight. "I knew it would be so," said Stubbs, in a tone in which I perceived a thrill of horror. O'Carroll asserted that he had caught sight of the masts of a ship as if sinking beneath the waves. "Very likely," observed Stubbs, "that was of the ship he was sending to the bottom,--the other was the _Dutchman_, and you don't see her now." "No, no, they were craft carrying human beings, and they have foundered without a chance of one man out of the many hundreds on board being saved!" exclaimed the captain.