Suddenly high aloft from off the maintop-gallant-yard--whose arm was jockeyed by the figure of a sailor doing something with the clew of the royal--came a clear, distant cry of “Sail-ho,” and I saw the man levelling his marline-spike at an object visible to him a little to the right of the flying-jibboom end.
“Aloft there!” bawled the mate, putting his hand to the side of his mouth, “how does she show, my lad?”
“‘Tis something black, sir,” cried the man, making a binocular glass of his fists. “‘Tis well to the starboard of the dazzle upon the water. It is too blinding that way to make sure.”
“Something black!” shouted the little colonel, whose Christian name was Desmond. “_The Corsaire_, Captain Bow, without doubt. Anybody feel inclined to bet?”
Some wagering followed, whilst I stepped below for a telescope of my own, and then went forward and got into the fore-rigging, with the glass slung over my shoulders. There was no need to ascend above the top. I levelled the telescope when I gained that platform, and instantly saw the object with a handbreadth of the gleam of the blue sea past her, showing that she was well this side of the horizon from the elevation of the foremast, and that she would be visible from the poop in a little while. There was but a very light swell on; the spires of the _Ruby_ floated steadily through the blue atmosphere. I had no difficulty in commanding the object therefore, and the powerful lenses of my telescope brought her close. It was a wreck, a sheer hulk indeed, and without a shadow of a doubt _The Corsaire_. Her masts were gone, though a fragment of bowsprit remained. Whole lengths of her bul-work were apparently crushed flat to the covering-board; nevertheless, the hull preserved a sort of rakish aspect, a piratical sheer of long, low side. “Let her prove what she will,” thought I, “I am a Dutchman if yonder craft hasn’t carried a bitter and poisonous sting in her head and tail in her time.”
They had “made” eight bells on the poop, and the mellow chimes were sounding upon the quarter-deck, and echoing in the silent squares of canvas, as I descended the rigging and made my way aft. I told Captain Bow that the craft ahead was a hulk, and without doubt _The Corsaire_; on hearing which the passengers went in a rush to the side and stood staring as though the object were close aboard, some of them pointing and swearing they could see her, though at the rate at which we were shoving through it she was a fair hour and a half yet behind the horizon from the altitude of the poop.