strap of it over your
shoulder, and shin up alongside that fellow in the cross-trees; take a
good look at the stranger; and report to me any peculiarities that you
may detect in her, will ye."

"Ay, ay, sir," I replied, touching my hat; and five minutes later I was
sitting in the main-topmast cross-trees, with the long barrel of the
telescope steadied against the topmast-head, and my eye glued to the
eye-piece. From this elevation I commanded a complete, if distant, view
of the low land about the river entrance, with its fringe of mangrove
trees running away inland, the sand hummocks, sparsely clothed with
coarse, reedy grass and trailing plants, and the endless line of the
surf-beaten African beach. Also through the skipper's powerful lenses I
obtained a most excellent view of the strange schooner, from her trucks
to her water-line, including such details as I could have discerned with
the naked eye at a distance of about half a mile. I saw, for example,
that, as the look-out had already reported, she was a large schooner--I
estimated her to be one hundred and eighty tons burthen at the least; I
verified the statement that her hull was painted all black from the rail
to the top of her copper; that she showed an enormous spread of canvas;
and that she sat very low in the water. But I noticed a few other
peculiarities as well; I saw that her bowsprit was painted black, while
her jib-booms were scraped and varnished; that her foremast, fore-
topmast, and fore-topgallant and royal-mast were varnished, while the
mast heads were painted black, and that the whole of the mainmast, from
the cap down, was painted _white_, which was a peculiarity that ought to
have been sufficient to identify her as far as one could see her. And
so it was; for the moment that I reported it the skipper hailed--

"Thank you, Mr Fortescue; that will do; you may come down. Or--hold on
a minute. Is the stranger far enough out of the river to enable her to
get clear away, think ye?"

"She is fully a mile from the mouth of the river, sir," I answered.

"Ah, that will do, then, thank you; you may both come down," answered
the skipper. And as I swung myself down through the cross-trees to the
topmast rigging, I heard him give the order to "Wear ship and make
sail."

Five minutes later the _Psyche_ was heading to the northward, close-
hauled on the port tack, under all plain sail to her royals, doing
nearly seven knots, and laying a course tha