y at any time in this first part of our cruise; for
we had seen nothing of any of them since the beginning of the gale, the
little _Ruby_ being the last we had sighted shortly before our being
forced to lie-to.

During the afternoon, however, the horizon clearing to the nor'ard and a
gleam of sunshine lighting up the sea, a distant sail was seen hull down
on our lee quarter.

"Signalman," hailed the officer of the watch, "what do you make her out
to be?"

"Can't say yet, sir," replied the man, with the glass screwed to his
eye, squinting to leeward. "She's too fur off, sir."

After a short pause the officer repeated his question.

"Make her out yet, Jones?"

"No, sir," replied the signalman; "but she's rising now, sir, an' I
thinks she's closing us."

"Ay."

Another short interval elapsed; and then, being down in the waist, right
under the break of the poop, the quarter-master having set me to work
flemishing down the slack ends of some of the sheets that he did not
think were tidily arranged, I heard the signalman mumble some
exclamation or other which he could not get out properly from his
excitement.

"What is it, you say?" said the officer of the watch, who had gone to
the binnacle to look at the compass and did not quite catch what the man
said. "Speak distinctly, my man. I can't hear you!"

"It's the _Ruby_, sir!" shouted out the signalman, in a voice that could
be heard, I believe, at the distance by which our consort was separated
from us, making the officer of the watch, Lieutenant Robinson, jump off
the deck, he having come up quite close in the meantime. "I knows her
by the clew on her tops'l."

"All right, my man," blurted out the lieutenant, who was a crusty, ill-
tempered, sour sort of chap, one always speaking to the men as if he had
a bad liver and who couldn't look a chap square in the eye if he stood
up before him, having underhung brows and a nasty way of looking from
under them. "You needn't roar at me like a grampus, Jones. I've a
great mind to put you in the list for disrespectful conduct to your
superior officer! What did you say?"

"The _Ruby_, sir," repeated the signalman, as tenderly now as a sucking
dove. "It's the gallant little _Ruby_ sure enough, sir."

The irate lieutenant did not appear, though, to share the enthusiasm of
Jones; and I afterwards heard that he had some grudge against the `boss'
of the _Ruby_, as indeed he had against most people with whom he came i