"It wasn't an hour before we could see the very waves splashing up under her black weather-side, and over her high bows, as she slanted right through it and rose to windward again, standing up to cross our course--a fine frigate-built Indiaman, sharper stemmed than her kind in ordinary, and square in her spread; one yard-arm just looking over the other as they ranged aloft, and all signs of a weatherly craft. 'That's the _Duke o' Bedford_!' said a sailor at the braces to his companions, 'all oak planks, and not a splinter of teak in _her_! No chance!' Out flew the British colours from her mizzen-peak, and next the Company's striped ensign at her fore-royal mast-head, as a signal to speak. However, the _Seringapatam_ only answered by showing her colours, and held on. All of a sudden the other Indiaman was seen slowly falling off before the wind, as if in scorn at such rude manners, and sure of passing us if she chose. For a moment the red sunset glanced through betwixt all three of her masts, every rope as fine as wire! then the canvas swung broad against it, blood-red from the sun, and she showed us her quarter-gallery, with a glimpse of her stern-windows glittering--you even made out the crowd of passengers and soldiers on her poop, and a man or two going up her rigging. The sea beyond her lay as blue as blue could be, what with the crimson streak that came zigzag on both sides of her shadow, and gleamed along the smooth troughs, taking a crest or two to dance on by the way; and what with the rough of it near hand, where the tops of the dark waves ran hither and thither in broad white flakes, we surging heavily over them. "In a few minutes more the sun was not only down, but the clouds banked up to westward of a deep purple; and almost at once you saw nothing of the other ship except when a stray streak somehow or other caught her rising, or her mast-heads came across a pale line in the clouds. The breeze got pleasanter as the night went on, and the _Seringapatam_ rattled away in fine style, careening to it by herself.