I looked and spied a sail hidden to me until this by the brig’s canvas. “How is she standing?” “Our vays.” She was about five miles distant. Bol had been using the glass. It lay upon the skylight. I examined the sail, and found her a small topsail schooner. With the naked eyes, by the look of her, as she floated out there in the frosty whiteness of sunshine, I had guessed her twice as big as we. She was coming along leisurely. The wind was off her quarter, and a light wind for fore-and-aft canvas. “Vhat vhas she, tink you, Mr. Fielding?” “Don’t you know a ship by her rig?” “I mean, vhat vhas her peesiness? Vhas she some leedle man-of-war?” “Perhaps a trader, bound across the Atlantic.” He went forward as far as the gangway and beckoned. Wirtz, who stood on the forecastle, called out the name of Galen, and then walked aft to Bol, along with Friend and Street. Galen came out of the caboose eating. His jaws worked with some mouthful he had crammed betwixt his teeth. There was but little discipline in all this, you will say. There was none whatever. There had been very little discipline on board the _Black Watch_ since illness had forced poor Greaves to give up and hand the command over to me. Was the fault mine? The long and short of it was, the men had never recognized me as mate in the room of Jacob Van Laar. They had worked for the safety of the ship and because of Yan Bol. I was an interloper. They had made me feel it, times beyond counting, in their sailors’ way; and now, though nominally captain, I was no more nor less than pilot, with authority only in the direction of the general safety. All this I very much understood as I walked the deck, appearing not to heed the group of men in the gangway, and wondering what matter they were settling among them. Presently Bol came aft, took the telescope to the men, and one after another of them leveled it at the little sail off the bow. I never caught what they said, though my steps sometimes brought me pretty close. They turned their faces my way sometimes. Street went over to the boat that lay stowed in the longboat amidships, looked into her, and returned to the others. I then thought to myself, “Are they going to signal that craft and put me aboard her?” I went into a violent passion over the suspicion, and came to a stand at the bulwarks, nearly opposite the spot where they were grouped, and stared, I have no doubt, with a very black face. Indeed, my conjecture had put me into such a rage that I heeded not, by a snap of the finger, what they might think. I tried to cool myself by reflecting that they could not do without me; but the mere notion that they meant to turn me out of the brig, and make off with Madam Aurora and the fifteen tons of silver, taking their chance of what might follow, worked like a madness in me.