It did not take me long, however, to recover my own reason, the more especially as I felt that we might require all the sense we had when the ship rounded and hove to. I could not, indeed, hope that they would send a boat through such a sea; they would lie by us and send a boat when the sea moderated, which, to judge by the barometer and the high and beaming sky, we might expect to find that night or next morning; and then we should require our senses, not only to keep the pumps going, but to enter the boat calmly and in an orderly way, and help our rescuers to save our lives. The boatswain leaned against the companion hatchway with his arms folded, contemplating the approaching ship with a wooden face. Variously and powerfully as the spectacle of the vessel had affected Cornish and Miss Robertson, and myself and the steward, on the boatswain it had scarcely produced any impression. I know not what kind of misgiving came into my mind as I looked from the coming ship to his stolid face. I had infinite confidence in this man's judgment and bravery, and his lifelessness on this occasion weighed down upon me like a heavy presentiment, insomuch that the cheery gratulatory words I was about to address to Miss Robertson died away on my lips. I should say that we had sighted this vessel's upper sails when she was about seventeen miles distant, and, therefore, coming down upon us before a strong wind, and helped onwards by the long running seas, in less than half an hour her whole figure was plain to us upon the water. I examined her carefully through the glass, striving to make out her nationality by the cut of her aloft. I thought she had the look of a Scotch ship, her hull being after the pattern of the Aberdeen clippers, such as I remembered them in the Australian trade, painted green, and she was also rigged with skysail-poles and a great breadth of canvas. I handed the glass to the boatswain, and asked him what country he took her to be of. After inspecting her, he said he did not think she was English; the colour of her canvas looked foreign, but it was hard to tell; we should see her colours presently. As she approached, Miss Robertson's excitement grew very great; not demonstrative--I mean she did not cry out nor gesticulate like the steward in the rigging; it was visible, like a kind of madness, in her eyes, in her swelling bosom, in a strange, wonderful, brilliant smile upon her face, such as a great actress might wear in a play, but which we who observe it know to be forced and unreal. I ran below for the fur cap and coat, and made her put them on, and then drew her away from the ship's side and kept close to her, even holding her by the hand for some time, for I could not tell what effect the sight of the ship might produce upon her mind, already strung and weakened by privation and cruel sorrow and peril.