I watched her with curiosity. She was something less than three miles distant, and she drew out very stately under a full breast of sail, rolling her three spires--the two foremost of which were clothed to the trucks--with the majesty of a war-ship. We might now make sure that she was bound for the bay, and meant to bring up. The air was still a very light wind, which made a continuous wonder of the muteness of the storm-shadow that was overhead; and the vessel, which we might now see was a barque of four hundred tons or thereabouts, floated into the bay very slowly. Her canvas swung as she rolled, and made a hurry of light of her, and one saw the glint of the sails broaden in the brows of the swell which chased and underran her, so reflective was the water, spite of the small wrinkling of it by the weak draught. 'A furriner,' said a man near me. 'Ay,' said I, examining her through a small but powerful pocket-telescope; 'that green caboose doesn't belong to an Englishman. She's hoisting her colour! Now I have it--a Dane!' 'What does she want to come here for?' exclaimed another of the little knot of men who had gathered about me. 'Something wrong, I allow.' 'Master drunk, per'aps,' said a third. 'He'll be making a lee zhore of our ugly bit of coast if it comes on to blow from the west'ard, and if not from there, then where else it's coming from who's going to guess?' exclaimed a gruff old fellow, peering at the vessel under a shaggy, contracted brow. 'Her captain may have a trick of the weather above our comprehension,' said I. 'If the gale's to come out of the north, he'll do well where he lets go his anchor; but if it's to be the other way about--well, I suppose some of our chaps will advise him. Maybe he has been tempted by the look of the bay; or he may have a sick or a dead man to land.' 'Perhaps he has a mind to vind us a job to-night zur,' said one of my lifeboat's men. We continued watching. Presently she began to shorten sail, and the leisurely manner in which the canvas was first clewed up and then rolled up was assurance enough to a nautical eye that she was not overmanned. I could distinguish the figure of a short, squarely-framed man, apparently giving orders from the top of a long house aft, and I could make out the figure of another man, seemingly young, flitting to and fro with a manner of idle restlessness, though at intervals he would pause and sweep the town and foreshore with his telescope.