But I heeded not the superstition of the ignorant creature, and made but one bound to where Peralta lay sound asleep, clutching and shaking him to arouse him, and telling him in the same breath that there was either a ship or a boat close aboard of us in the fog. The pearl merchant and Jenipa were upon their legs in a moment, and for the space of about ten minutes we listened with all our ears, but heard no sound, other than the flapping of our sails and the creaking of the yards, as they rubbed and swayed against the masts. It was odd that, although both Disco and myself heard the cry so distinctly repeated, we neither of us could tell the direction from which it appeared to come. Perhaps the fog affected sounds passing through it. At all events, although we got out the oars, we knew not in which way to row, so as to put as much sea as possible between a ship which might very likely be an enemy, and which would certainly be more than a match for the light piragua and her crew of four. All this while the dawn was gradually brightening through the mist; the fog, which before was of a pitchy darkness, becoming gradually of a pale grey hue, and then lifting and opening here and there, so as to show lanes, as it were, and patches of clear air, which, in the next moment, would be again filled up by rolling masses of the vapour. However, the mist was evidently thinning as the sun approached to the horizon, and we watched warily to catch the first glimpse of our unknown neighbour. Presently, the fog began to change its cold white hue for a tinge or blush of warm and golden light, which appeared, as it were, to penetrate and pervade the vapour, and by which we knew that the sun had risen; while, at the same time, our glimpses into the ever-shifting lanes and clear spaces continually being formed by the motion of the seething wreaths and masses of vapour, becoming every moment longer and clearer—Peralta, who was standing upon the starboard gunwale of the piragua, suddenly exclaimed, in a low, earnest tone: ‘There! look there!’ We all turned round at once, and saw, not thirty fathoms from us, the dusky broadside and towering rigging of a ship. She was gracefully rocking upon the long seas, the mist all curling round her, and floating, as it appeared, in blurring patches and masses among her extended sails, so that the masts and all the fabric of spars and canvas which they bore were half lost in the bewildering vapour. We had no time, however, to make any very minute examination of the stranger. She saw us as soon as we saw her, and half a dozen men, clustering into the main rigging, shouted out, in French and English, that we should pull the piragua alongside. I looked at Peralta. He slightly shrugged his shoulders. ‘If there were but a bladder full of wind,’ he said. ‘Ho! the piragua ahoy!’ was now again hailed from the strange ship—‘come alongside, d’ye hear, or it will be the worse for you.’