I kissed her hand respectfully, and said that a single hour of sound sleep would do her a deal of good; by that time I would take care that breakfast should be ready for her and her father, and I then held open the cabin door for her to enter, and returned on deck. A most extraordinary and wonderful sight saluted me when I reached the poop. The sun had risen behind the vast embankment of cloud, and its glorious rays, the orb itself being invisible, projected in a thousand lines of silver beyond the margin of the bank to the right and overhead, jutting out in visible threads, each as defined as a sunbeam in a dark room. But the effect of this wonderful light was to render the canopy of cloud more horribly livid; and weird and startling was the contrast of the mild and far-reaching sunshine, streaming in lines of silver brightness into the steely sky, with the blue lightning ripping up the belly of the cloud and suffering the eye to dwell for an instant on the titanic strata of gloom that stood ponderously behind. Nor was the ocean at this moment a less sombre and majestical object than the heavens; for upon half of it rested a shadow deep as night, making the water sallow and thick, and most desolate to behold under the terrible curtain that lay close down to it upon the horizon; whilst all on the right the green sea sparkled in the sunbeams, heaving slowly under the calm that had fallen. Looking far away on the weather beam, and where the shadow on the sea was deepest, I fancied that I discerned a black object, which might well be a ship with her sails darkened by her distance from the sun. I pointed it out to Cornish, who saw it too, and I then fetched the telescope. Judge of my surprise and consternation, when the outline of a boat with her sail low down on the mast, entered the field of the glass! I cried out, "It's the long-boat!" Cornish turned hastily. "My God!" he cried, "they're doomed men!" I gazed at her intently, but could not be deceived, for I recognised the cut of the stu'nsail, lowered as it was in anticipation of the breaking of the storm, and I could also make out the minute dark figures of the men in her. My surprise, however, was but momentary, for, considering the lightness of the wind that had prevailed all night, and the probability of her having stood to and fro in expectation of coming across us, or the quarter-boat which had attacked us, I had no reason to expect that they should have been far off. The boatswain came along the quarterdeck singing out, "It's all right below! No fear of a leak there!" "Come up here!" I cried. "There's the long-boat yonder!" On hearing this, he ran aft as hard as he could and stared in the direction I indicated, but could not make her out until he had the glass to his eye, on which he exclaimed-- "Yes, it's her, sure enough. Why, we may have to make another fight for it. She's heading this way, and if she brings down any wind, by jingo she'll overhaul us."