By noon the sail that I had noticed early that morning had neared us in some insensible fashion till she hung something more than a mile away off the quarter as before. I had several times examined her with the telescope and was not a little impressed by her appearance. She was a brig of about two hundred and sixty tons; a most beautiful and perfect model, indeed, with a clipper lift of bow and a knife-like cutwater and a long wonderfully graceful arching sweep of side rounding into the very perfection of a run. Her copper came high, and was very clean, as though she were fresh from port. Her masts were singularly lofty for her size, both of them tapering away into skysail poles with yards across; but she had furled all canvas down to her two topsails and foresail, and lay rolling heavily, lifting her symmetrical fabric to the height of the swell, when she would be hove out against the ugly sulky background in such keen relief that her rigging glanced like hairs as it came from the mastheads to the channels, with a white, odd, almost ghastly stare in her canvas that was brilliant as cotton; then down she would sink behind some sullen almost livid peak till she was hidden to the reef-band of her fore-course. Throughout the morning I had observed Captain Keeling somewhat restlessly examining her; that is to say, he would send looks enough at her through his binocular glass to suggest that he found something unusual, perhaps disturbing, in her appearance. There were no sights to be had, though the old fellow and his two mates stood about the deck, sextants in hands, occasionally lifting their eyes to that part of the sky where the sun was supposed to be. Observing Mr. Prance at the rail, steadfastly observing the brig down upon the quarter, I went up to him. ‘Pray what do you find in that craft yonder, Mr. Prance, to interest you? The skipper does not seem able to keep his glass off her.’ ‘What do _you_ see, Mr. Dugdale?’ he answered, viewing me out of the corners of his eyes without turning his head. ‘Come, you have been a sailor. What is _your_ notion of her?’ ‘She’s a beauty, anyway,’ I answered; ‘no builder’s yard ever turned out anything sweeter in the shape of a hull--a trifle too lofty, perhaps. For my part, I hate everything above royals. Give me short mastheads, the royal-yard sitting close under the track, English frigate-fashion’--I was proceeding. ‘No, no; I don’t mean that, Mr. Dugdale,’ he interrupted with a hint of a seaman’s impatience at my criticism. ‘What, then?’ I asked. ‘Does she look honest, think you?’ said he. ‘Ha!’ cried I: ‘now I understand.’ ‘Hush! not a word if you please,’ he exclaimed with a glance along the poop; ‘the ladies must on no account be frightened, and it is but a mere suspicion on Captain Keeling’s part at best. Yet he has had some acquaintance with gentry of her kind, if, indeed, yonder chap be of the denomination he conjectures.’