At length, after what seemed an interminable interval, we arrived within half a mile of the boat; and now the barque was kept slightly away, in order that we might have room to round-to and shoot up alongside the small craft without giving her occupants the trouble to out oars and pull to us. This brought her out clear of our starboard bow, and afforded us on the poop a better opportunity than we had yet enjoyed of scrutinising her from that position; of which Sir Edgar, who had again joined me, took the fullest advantage, keeping his binoculars levelled upon her without a moment's intermission. Yet all this time no further movement had been observed on board her, although she was now so close to us that, had such been made, it could not possibly have escaped our notice. She was a ship's gig, about twenty-four feet long, painted green, and she floated too light in the water to have many people in her. She was rigged with a single short mast, stepped well forward, upon which an old and well-worn lugsail was set--or, rather, _hoisted_-- for the tack had parted, the sheet was adrift, and the yard hung nearly up and down the mast, the foot of the sail hanging over the port side and trailing in the water. Her rudder was shipped, and swayed idly from side to side as the boat rocked gently upon the low swell and the small ripples that followed her in her slow drift before the dying breeze. Her paint looked faded and sea-washed in the ruddy glow of the setting sun; her bottom, along the water-line, showed a grey coating of incipient barnacles, and there were many other indications about her that to a sailor's eye was proof conclusive of the fact that she had been in the water for several days. As I noted these particulars through the telescope, while we were approaching her, my attention was arrested by a movement and occasional swirl in the water round about her; and, looking more intently, I presently descried the triangular dorsal fin of a shark in close proximity to the boat's side. Looking more closely still, I saw another, and another, and yet another, and still others; so that, as I looked, the boat seemed to be surrounded by sharks, hemmed in and fairly beset by them. The water all about her was literally alive with them; its surface all a-swirl with their eager, restless movements as they swam to and fro and darted hither and thither, circling round the little craft and away from her, only to turn sharply, with a whisk of the tail that left a white foam-fleck and a miniature whirlpool on the gleaming surface of the water, and force their way back to her side through the jostling crowd of their companions.