Four days later, the ship being then within some three hundred miles of the western end of the Straits of Sunda, the weather being stark calm, with an absolutely cloudless sky, the craft at the time going about ten knots, and steering herself, as the party stepped out on deck after lunch and glanced around them, they became aware that during the period of their absence from the deck they had raised the canvas of a large full-rigged ship above the horizon. The stranger was then bearing about two points on the starboard bow. As this was the first craft that had been seen since they had dipped their ensign to the _Baroda_, she excited enough interest to cause everybody to make an instant rush for their binoculars; and within five minutes eight pairs of those very useful instruments had been focussed upon her. She was then hull-down, and to the non-professional eye there was nothing at all unusual in her appearance; she was simply a becalmed ship under topsails and topgallantsails, with her courses clewed up but not furled. A cloud of minute spots--which could only be birds--hovering round her, bore no significance to any one save Mildmay; and even he was not sure that he knew quite what it meant. For it is by no means unusual for whole flocks of gulls to hover in the wake of a ship at sea--especially if there happens to be land within a reasonable distance--for the sake of the fragments of waste food that daily go over a ship's side after every meal. But whereas, under ordinary circumstances, a hundred gulls constitute a very respectable flock, there appeared to be at least ten times this number hovering about the stranger; and it was this unusual circumstance that prompted Mildmay to suggest to Sir Reginald that they should edge a little nearer to her, with the object of seeking an explanation of the phenomenon. The baronet raising no objection, Mildmay stepped into the pilot-house, and, adjusting the helm, brought the ship straight over the bows of the _Flying Fish_, and at the same time raised the speed of the latter to eighteen knots.