"There was nobody else visible at the time, and the said cliff stood fair up like a look-out place, so as to shut them out as they went higher. Once or twice after, I fancied I made out a man's head or two lower down the gully than the cliff was, which, it occurred to me, might possibly be the botanists, as they called themselves, busy finding out how long St Helena had been an island; however, I soon turned the glass before me upon the ship, by this time right opposite the ragged opening of Prosperous Bay, and heading well up about fourteen miles or so off the coast, as I reckoned, to make Jamestown harbour. The moment I had the sight of the glass right for her--though you'd have thought she stood still on the smooth soft blue water--I could see her whole beam rise off the swells before me, from the dark side and white band, checkered with a double row of ports, to the hamper of her lofty spars, and the sails braced slant to the breeze, the foam gleaming under her high bows, and her wake running aft in the heave of the sea. She was evidently a seventy-four; I fancied I could make out her men's faces peering over the yards toward the island, as they thought of 'Boneypart'; a white rear-admiral's flag was at the mizzen-royal-mast-head, leaving no doubt she was the _Conqueror_ at last, with Admiral Plampin, and, in a day or two at farthest, the _Hebe_ would be bound for India. "I had just looked over my shoulder toward Longwood, letting the _Conqueror_ sink back again into a thing no bigger than a model on a mantelpiece, when, all at once, I saw someone standing near the brow of the cliff I mentioned, apparently watching the vessel, with a long glass at his eye, like myself. 'Twas farther than I could see to make out anything, save so much; and, ere I had screwed the glass for such a near sight, there were seven or eight figures more appearing half over the slope behind; while my hand shook so much with holding the glass so long, that at first I brought it to bear full on the cracks and blocks in the front of the crag, with the large green leaves and trailers on it flickering idly with the sunlight against my eyes, till I could have seen the spiders inside, I daresay. Next I held it too high, where the Admiral and Lord Frederick were standing by their horses, a good way back; the Governor, as I supposed, sitting on his, and two or three others along the rise. At length, what with kneeling down to rest it on one knee, I had the glass steadily fixed on the brow of the rocks, where I plainly saw a tall dark-whiskered man, in a rich French uniform, gazing to seaward--I knew him I sought too well by pictures, however, not to be sadly galled.