When I stepped on deck at eight o’clock I found a brilliant morning all about, but a softer sea, a lighter wind than I had left, a languider courtesying of the brig, even a dull flap at times forward when the cloths of the heavy forecourse hollowed into the stoop of the bows as a child’s cheek dimples when it sucks in its breath. The trade-wind was not taking off. Not at all. The heavens were gay with the flight of the trade-cloud, as gay as ever the sky could be made by a dance of sea-fowl on the wing; and while that vapor flew, one knew that the wind was constant. Only we had happened just now to have washed with foam rising in thunder to each cathead into a pause or interval of the inspiring commercial gale of the North Atlantic; the strong, glad rush of air which had hoarily veiled every deep blue hollow with white brine, torn flashing from each curling head, had sunk for a little into a tropic fanning, and the swell of the sea was small and each surge no more than a giant ripple, with scarce weight enough in its run to ridge into foam. But, bless me, had a week of stark calm descended upon our heads we should still have done uncommonly well. Our average progress, since the day on which I had recovered consciousness on board the _Black Watch_, had come very near to steam as steam is in these days in which I am writing, though to what velocities the boiler may hereafter attain I am not here to predict. Greaves stood abreast of the wheel. He was looking through a telescope at some object that lay about three points on the weather bow. He continued to gaze with a degree of steadfastness that rendered him insensible of my presence. I looked and seemed to see some small vessel upon the edge of the sea; but I could not be sure. She was above a league distant, and the morning light was confusing that way with the blending of the shadowy lift of the swell, the violet shadows of the clouds, and the hazy splendor of the early morning distances. My caressing and speaking to Galloon, who lay near his master, caused Greaves to bring his eye away from the glass. “Good-morning, Fielding. The breeze has fallen slack. I am trying to make out the meaning of that little schooner down there;” and he pointed over the bow with his telescope. “Look for yourself.” I leveled the glass, and beheld a schooner of about a hundred tons, rolling broadside to the sea, abandoned, or, if not abandoned, then helpless. Her jib boom was gone; so, too, was her fore topmast; otherwise she seemed sound enough, saving that for canvas she had nothing set but her gaff foresail, though, as I seemed to find, when I strained my gaze through the glass, her mainsail was not furled, but lay heaped upon the boom, as though the halliards had been let go and nothing more done. “She’ll be worse off than the craft that Van Laar’s gone home in,” said I, returning the telescope to Greaves. “Do you believe in dreams?” said he. “No,” I answered.