As he advanced towards the companion steps the hatch was darkened by the figure of Mr Eagle, who, on catching sight of the Captain, cried: "A sail broad on the larboard bow, sir!" Mr Lawrence rushed back to his cabin, whence he took from a shelf a telescope of uncommon power for those times, the gift of no less a man than Captain Acton after intelligence had been brought to him of a particular heroic piece of behaviour on the part of Mr Lawrence. With this telescope he sprang on to the deck, and levelling it at the sea over the lee bow, viewed in the lenses the picture of a large man-of-war with two white bands broken by gun-ports. She was far away, yet not so distant but that a hand's breadth of her black side could be seen shivering in mirage betwixt the lower white band and the wool-white tremble of water running aft. All the men of the _Minorca_ were on deck at work here and there. They looked at Mr Lawrence as with levelled telescope he stood on the quarterdeck viewing the distant battleship. They all belonged to Old Harbour Town; all had heard of him, and a few knew him by sight. They were members of a group of inhabitants who felt that the presence amongst them of a man whose sea story though brief was brilliant did them and Old Harbour Town honour, and they regarded him as he stood with the glass at his eye, as though they should say, "Yon's a man-o'-war, and she may be a Johnny; but there's the Jack who will know what to do with her." And, may be, some of those who thus reflected cast their eyes upon the figure of Mr Eagle, who stood near enough to the Captain to enable the sight to master the details of a very striking contrast. "Hoist the ensign!" exclaimed Mr Lawrence. Mr Eagle, breaking into a run, sent aloft at the peak of the barque the meteor flag of Old England. "British!" said Mr Lawrence in a moment, as though speaking to himself, "as I thought," holding the man-o'-war in view in his telescope, and marking the slow soaring of the British flag to the gaff-end of the two-decker.