All of which the writer now proceeds to relate, beginning with so strange a coincidence as, perhaps, none but those readers who, in their voyage through life, have recognised that truth is more strange than the wildest fiction, will be willing to allow within the bounds of likelihood. However, to make a beginning--since the coincidence is true--the _Emperor of the Moon_ was in those latitudes above described when, it being a bright hot morning with the sea already gleaming like molten brass, with the pitch between the planks already of the consistency of putty, and with the brasswork in such a state of heat that it was unsafe to touch it unless one wanted to leave the skin of his palms and fingers behind them, the look-out on the fo'c's'le head yelled: 'Sail, right ahead!' Now, since nothing of this kind, neither steamer nor sailing vessel, had been seen since they had northed out of the west-wind drift, and since, also, the liners were rarely found outside of the Equatorial current, this cry was sufficient to fill every one on board with a considerable amount of interest and excitement. 'Whereaway?' called out Charke, who was on the poop at this moment, the captain, his wife, and Bella being below at breakfast; and, ere the man could repeat that the sail was right ahead and about five miles off, all those others there had come on deck. 'How pretty it looks, shining in the sun!' the girl exclaimed, as she regarded it through a pair of marine glasses which her uncle had placed at her disposal; 'and how the sail glistens! It looks like a star.' 'Humph!' said the captain, as he gazed through his binocular. 'Like a star! True enough, so it does. And,' he said, addressing the two mates who were standing near him, 'we have seen such stars hereabouts before, eh? Do you think,' he went on, addressing Charke, lowering his voice a little, 'it is one of those?' 'Don't know,' Charke said, working his own glass a good deal. 'Can't see how it can be; too far to the east. Bussorah, Muscat, Ras-el-Had, Mohamrah, Oman--that's their mark. What should they be doing here?' 'All the same,' exclaimed Pooley, 'it's the rig, and the true shape, that of a Jargonelle pear cut in half. I do believe that's what it is. They might have been blown out of their course, you know, or chased by one of Her Majesty's ships. What do you think?' 'I think,' said Charke, who always spoke of everything connected with his calling in the most unemotional manner possible, 'I think we shall know when we come up to her, as we must do in about half an hour. While,' he continued, with a subdued tone in his voice, while his eye glinted sideways towards where Bella stood, 'we are not naval officers but only humble merchant seamen. There's no prize-money for us, therefore it is not our business.'