Before the sun had got up, the wind had gone down, and it soon became what seamen call a flat calm. The sea, as the hot rays of the sun shone on it, was, as it were, like molten lead; the sails flapped lazily against the mast; the brig's sides, as she every now and then gave an unwilling roll, threw off with a loud splash the bright drops of water which they lapped up from the imperceptibly heaving bosom of the deep. The hot sun struck down on our heads with terrific force, while the pitch bubbled up out of the seams of the deck; and Bill Tasker, the wit of the crew, declared he could hear it squeak into the bargain. An awning was spread over the deck in some way to shelter us, or we should have been roasted alive. Bill, to prove the excess of the heat, fried a slice of salt junk on a piece of tin, and, peppering it well, declared it was delicious. The only person who seemed not only not to suffer from the heat, but to enjoy it, was the black cook; and he, while not employed in his culinary operations, spent the best part of the day basking on the bowsprit-end. The crew were engaged in their usual occupations of knotting yarns, making sinnet, etcetera, while the aforesaid Bill Tasker was instructing me--for whom he had taken an especial fancy--in the mysteries of knotting and splicing; but we all of us, in spite of ourselves, went about our work in a listless, careless way, nor had the officers even sufficient energy to make us more lively. Certainly it was hot. There had been no sail in sight that I know of all the day, when, as I by chance happened to cast my eyes over the bulwarks, they fell on the topsails of a schooner, just rising above the line of the horizon. "A sail on the starboard bow!" I sung out to the man who was nominally keeping a look-out forward. He reported the same to the first mate. "Where away is she?" I heard the captain inquire, as he came directly afterwards on deck. "To the southward, sir; she seems to be creeping up towards us with a breeze of some sort or other," answered Mr Dobree. "Here, lad," he continued, beckoning to me, "go aloft, and see what you can make of her. Your eyes are as sharp as any on board, if I mistake not, and a little running will do you no harm." I was soon at the mast-head, and in two minutes returned, and reported her to be a large topsail schooner, heading north-north-east with the wind about south-east. "I can't help thinking, sir, from her look, that this is the same craft that was lying off New Orleans two days ago," I added, touching my hat to the captain. I don't remember exactly what made me suppose this, but such I know was my idea at the time. "What, your friend Captain Hawk's craft, the _Foam_, you mean, I suppose?" he observed. "But how can that be? She was bound to the Havanah, and this vessel is standing away from it."