The man who steered the boat was the captain; he climbed over the side of the _Aurora_, and presented the aspect of a man not unlike Mr John Eagle; he looked sour with succession of bad weather, with little ships that made nothing but leeway on a wind, with immensely long voyages, with shortness of rations and fresh water, and with the aridity of the ocean which he had been forced to keep for nearly the whole of his life. "I should be much obliged for a cask of beef, sir," he said, after touching the narrow penthouse of a queerly constructed fur cap. "It's still a long way home for that there _Louisa Ann_, whose bin a hundred and seventy days in bringing us so fur." "Have you spoke any ships lately?" asked Captain Weaver. "The last we spoke," answered the man, "was the day before yesterday. And we took out of her by request of her master, a young female who was said to have gone mad, but for my part I never met with anybody saner. She's an additional mouth, and a cask of beef would be grateful." "A young female!" said Captain Acton. "What was the name of the vessel you took her from?" At this point the Admiral levelled his glass at the brig. The master of the _Louisa Ann_ went to the side and shouted down, received an answer, returned and said: "Her name was the _Minorca_." "The _Minorca_!" shouted Captain Acton. "The day before yesterday! And you received a young lady from her?" "By God!" cried Admiral Lawrence in a voice of thunder, letting fly the profanity with the bellows of a boatswain, "why, Acton, there's Lucy aboard that brig! I can make her out plain in this glass." "She's a beautiful young lady--highly eddicated," said the master of _Louisa Ann_. Captain Acton levelled his telescope. He did not need to long survey the figure of the woman who was standing near the tiller that was grasped by a man. The lenses brought her face close to him. "It is Lucy!" he said, in a voice in which awe and amazement were so mingled that one should say the apparition of a ghost, of something spiritual and fearful to the observer, could not have filled the hollow of his mouth with that tone. He was now seized with a passion of delight. "Lower a boat, Captain Weaver! Lower a boat!" he shouted, losing his habitual gentlemanlike coolness and calm in the overwhelming sensations of that moment. "Bear a hand now! Be quick! It is the lady for whom we have been chasing the _Minorca_. Quick, I say!" He stamped his foot. "She is waving her handkerchief!" cried the Admiral, with his eye at the telescope. "God bless her! God bless us all! What a miracle of discovery!" "A relation, sir?" said the master of the _Louisa Ann_, addressing Captain Weaver, whom he had immediately perceived was not of the standing of the two Naval gentlemen. "My daughter, sir!" cried Captain Acton. "Then I'm proud and 'appy to have been the instrument of a-bringing her to you. I'm a father myself and can understand your feelings, sir," said the captain of the brig.