hat I could do not to
chafe myself into a fume of impatience.

So passed the day until about four o'clock in the afternoon, when there
happened a certain thing that, had thunder and lightning burst from a
clear sky, it could not have amazed me more. I being in my cabin at the
time, comes Mr. Langely, my first mate, with the strange news that the
lookout had sighted a vessel over the point of land to the southward. I
could hardly accredit what he said, for, as above stated, not a breath
of air was going. I hurried out of my cabin and upon deck, where I found
Mr. White, the second mate, standing at the port side of the ship, with
a glass in his hand directed a few points west of south, and over a
spit of land which ran out in the channel towards that quarter, at which
place the cape was covered by a mightily thick growth of scrub-bushes,
with here and there a tall palm-tree rising from the midst of the
thickets. Over beyond these I could see the thin white masts of the
vessel that the lookout had sighted. There was no need of the glass, for
I could see her plain enough, though not of what nature she might be.
However, I took the telescope from Mr. White's hands, and made a long
and careful survey of the stranger, but as much to hide my thoughts as
for any satisfaction that I could gain; for what confounded me beyond
measure was that a vessel should be sighted so suddenly, and in a dead
calm, where I felt well assured no craft had been for days past. Nor was
I less amazed to find, as I held the stranger steadfastly in the circle
of the object-glass, a tall palm-tree being almost betwixt the
_Cassandra_ and her, and almost directly in my line of sight, that she
was slowly and steadily making way towards the northward, and at a very
considerable angle with the Gulf current, which there had a set more to
the westward than where we lay at anchor.

I think that all, or nearly all, of my passengers were upon the
poop-deck at that time, Captain Leach with a pocket field-glass which he
had fetched with him from England, and with which he was directing
Mistress Pamela's observation to the strange craft. Nearly all the crew
were also watching her by this time, and in a little while they
perceived, what I had seen from the first, that the vessel was by some
contrivance making head without a breath of wind, and nearly against the
Gulf current.

As for the stranger herself, so far as I could judge, seeing nothing of
her hull, she wa