more than topsails and
courses. I took the glass from the captain, and believed I could make
out the heads of two or three people showing above the bulwark rail
abaft the mainmast.

"'What's their trouble going to prove?' said the captain.

"'They're waiting for us,' said I. 'They saw us, and put the helm
down, and got their little ship in irons instead of backing their
topsail yard. No sailor-man there, I doubt.'

"'A small colonial trader, you'll find,' said the captain, 'with a
crew of four or five Kanakas. The captain's sick and the mate was
accidentally left ashore at the last island.'

"It blew a four-knot breeze--four knots, I mean, for the _Swan_.
Wrinkling the water under her bows, and smoothing into oil a cable's
length of wake astern of her, the whaler floated down to the little
brig within hailing distance. We saw but two men, and one of them was
at the wheel. There was an odd look of confusion aloft, or rather let
me describe it as a want of that sort of precision which a sailor's
eye would seek for and instantly miss, even in the commonest old
sea-donkey of a collier. Nothing was rightly set for the lack of
hauling taut. Running gear was slackly belayed, and swung with the
rolling of the little brig like Irish pennants. The craft was clean at
the bottom, but uncoppered. She was a round-bowed contrivance, with a
spring aft which gave a kind of mulish, kick-up look to the run of
her.

"One of the two visible men, a broad-chested, thick-set fellow, in a
black coat and a wide, white straw hat, got upon the bulwark, and
stood holding on by a backstay, watching our approach, but he did not
offer to hail. I thought this queer; it struck me that he hesitated to
hail us, as though wanting the language of the sea in this business of
speaking.

"'Brig ahoy!' shouted the captain.

"'Hallo!' answered the man.

"'What is wrong with you?'

"'We are short-handed, sir, and in great distress,' was the answer.

"'What is your ship, and where are you from, and where are you bound
to?'

"When these questions were put the man looked round to the fellow who
stood at the brig's little wheel. It was certain he was not a sailor,
and it was possible he sought for counsel from the helmsman, who was
probably a forecastle hand. He turned his face again our way in a
minute, and shouted out in a powerful voice:

"'We are the brig _Cyprus_, of Sydney, New South Wales, bound to the
Cape of Good Hope, and very much out of o