, just for a second or
two, to see if there was any more comin': and then, not seein' anything,
I went straight to the binnacle and took the bearin', which I found to
be nor'-west and by west, half west."

With one consent we both walked aft to the binnacle and peered into it.
The schooner had swung several points while the gunner had been spinning
his somewhat long-winded yarn, for the bearing which he gave now lay
about a point over the starboard quarter. I stared into the blackness
in that direction, but could see nothing. Then I got the night glass
and, setting it to my focus, raised it to my eye, pointing it out over
the starboard quarter and sweeping it slowly and carefully to right and
left. For a minute or two I saw nothing; then, as I swept the tube
along what I judged to be the line of the horizon, a tiny smudge of
radiance--so dim as to be scarcely more than a suggestion--seemed to
float athwart the lenses and was gone again. There is probably nothing
in ordinary life much more difficult than to pick up and retain in the
lenses of a telescope, levelled by hand, a spark of light so minute and
faint as to be invisible to the unaided eye in the midst of the
surrounding darkness, and the difficulty is enhanced when the attempt is
made from the deck of a small vessel oscillating though ever so gently
on the ridges of a long, low-running swell, and for the life of me I
could not again find the feeble glimmer that had seemed to swim athwart
the instrument, try as I would.

"It is no good, Henderson," I said at last, abandoning the attempt in
despair, and handing the telescope over to him. "I am almost certain
that for a single instant I caught a faint blur of light away out there;
but I cannot find it now. Take the glass, and see if you can meet with
any better success. But verify your bearing before you do so."

The schooner had swung a point or two further round by this time, and
the bearing now lay broad over the starboard beam, in which direction
Henderson pointed his glass. Meanwhile Dundas, the midshipman who had
called me, had slipped down below and brought his own telescope on deck,
and was working away with it, but neither he nor the gunner met with any
luck; and I was about to try my hand again when a slight lessening of
the intensity of the darkness away down in the eastern quarter indicated
the approach of dawn. In those low latitudes the transition from night
to day, and _vice versa_, is extr