sailors are undemonstrative: Colonel Kenealy, strolling the deck with a
cigar, saw they were watching another ship with maritime curiosity, and
making comments; but he discerned no particular emotion nor anxiety in
what they said, nor in the grave low tones they said it in. Perhaps a
brother seaman would though.

The next observation that trickled out of Fullalove's tube was
this: "I judge there are too few hands on deck, and too
many--white--eyeballs--glittering at the portholes."

"Confound it!" muttered Bayliss, uneasily; "how can you see that?"

Fullalove replied only by quietly handing his glass to Dodd. The
captain, thus appealed to, glued his eye to the tube.

"Well, sir; see the false ports, and the white eyebrows?" asked Sharpe,
ironically.

"I see this is the best glass I ever looked through," said Dodd doggedly,
without interrupting his inspection.

"I think he is a Malay pirate," said Mr. Grey.

Sharpe took him up very quickly, and, indeed, angrily: "Nonsense! And if
he is, he won't venture on a craft of this size."

"Says the whale to the swordfish," suggested Fullalove, with a little
guttural laugh.

The captain, with the American glass at his eye, turned half round to the