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As the Barquentine drew closer, she let go the sheets of her three fore and aft topsails, letting them hang to the crosstrees in great bunches of canvas. Then, squaring her fore-yards and hauling her tremendous booms amidships, she lay stationary, or nearly so, not a hundred yards away. Big and heavy as she was, her crew handled her like a top. Of fully 1200 tons burden, she was down the water aft, with a sheer in her from the elliptic stern to well forward of the fore-rigging, curving to a fine, free, gamecock-headed, graceful bow, which, added to her immensely lofty, raking masts and spreading breadths of canvas, gave her in some measure, to my eye, in spite of the red ensign streaming from her halyards, the air of a great bird of prey about to pounce on the naked, defenceless Hebe.
All at once, amidships on her decks, I caught sight of something that made my heart jump half-way to my mouth. The object was the stern of a boat, with on it a large gilt rising sun--an emblem the memory of which I was not likely to forget.