'I have just sent a boat to board her,' answered the captain. 'Will you allow me to use that glass?' He took the telescope from the captain's hands, and resting the tubes on the bulwark rail, gazed thirstily. There was something of astonishment--indeed, of amazement--in his face when he turned to Captain Barrington. 'I don't think I can be mistaken,' he exclaimed in a low voice, talking to the captain, but looking at the schooner. 'It is the same figure-head, exactly the same rig, the same size, so far as the eye can measure her at this distance. She has a deck-house for her sailors, and her paintwork is the same. It will be extraordinary!' He fetched his breath in a half-gasp. 'Do you know that vessel, d'ye say, Captain Parry?' asked old Barrington, looking with curiosity and interest at the fine young fellow. 'I would swear that she is the _Mowbray_,' answered Captain Parry, picking up the glass afresh, and continuing to talk. 'She was purchased by Mr. Vanderholt, who made a yacht of her, and, when I was last in England, I went a short cruise in her along with Mr. Vanderholt and his daughter, the lady to whom--to whom---- Good God! the longer I look, the more I am satisfied. No name is painted on her; you will find her name in the boats. What, under heaven, brings her here, lying abandoned? Yes, oh yes! I'd pick her out if she were in a fleet of five hundred sail.' 'It may be as you say,' exclaimed Captain Barrington. 'It is a very remarkable meeting. But we can be sure of nothing until the third officer returns.' A few passengers, attracted by this conversation, had drawn close. You heard murmurs of excitement. A voyage at sea, in the old days of tacks and sheets, was a tedious affair, in spite of flirtation, cards, the simple diversions of the dance on the quarter-deck, the heaving of the quoit, the bets on the run. Even a floating bottle was a something to cause a stir. It broke the dull continuity of the day. A sail was a Godsend. And here now, after many weeks of tedious ocean travel, here now had suddenly uprisen, all at once, coming down a-beam out of the darkness of the midnight, so to speak, an ocean mystery that would be fraught with an inexpressible significance if Captain Parry's conjecture proved accurate. To this gentleman, for whom the head pump had magically ceased to have existence, the time of waiting and suspense was frantically long. Lieutenant Piercy came and stood beside him. 'But, supposing it is the _Mowbray_,' said the young officer: 'her presence in this sea needn't concern your friends. The vessel may have been sold. They may have been carrying her to some distant port. If it is fever, the dead will be found; if mutiny----' Here Lieutenant Piercy stopped, puzzled.