My Shipmate Louise, Volume II

So light was the breeze, that it was drawing on to ten o'clock in the morning before the approaching vessel lay plain on the sea. Long before this I had made her out to be a square-rigged craft, and sometimes I would imagine that she was the corvette, and sometimes that she was the _Countess Ida_. It had been a time of breathless expectation, of crushing suspense. Again and again had I mounted the rigging to make sure that she had not shifted her course, and was edging away from us. Again and again had I run my eyes round the sea with a passionate prayer in my heart that the wind might hold; for if it shifted, we stood to lose the ship; and if it fell, the calm might last all day, with the prospect of another black night before us and a deserted ocean at daybreak.

But now, drawing on to this hour of ten, the hull of the vessel had risen to its bends, and though I might be certain of nothing else, it was absolutely sure that the stranger was neither the _Magicienne_ nor the _Countess Ida_. She had puzzled me greatly for a considerable time; for even when her fore-course had fairly lifted she yet seemed to be rising more canvas. But by this hour I could distinguish. She was a small vessel, painted white -- whether barque or ship I could not then tell. She had studdingsails out and skysails set, and showed as an airy delicate square of pearl; and indeed I might have believed that she was the Indiaman for that reason, until her snow-white body came stealing out to the stare I fixed upon her, and then I looked at Miss Temple.