noon
Nay more -- the master generously represented my defence of the battery in such a light that I received the skipper 's highest commendations and renewed promises of support and assistance in my career . At sunrise next morning we weighed and stood out to sea , bound on a cruise to the westward . The next two months passed away in the most drearily uneventful manner , the ship being at sea the whole time . At the end of that period , being in latitude 4 degrees south and longitude 5 degrees east on our way back to the Congo , the ship standing to the northward and eastward at the time , under all plain sail , with light baffling south-easterly airs , the look-out aloft , just before being relieved at noon , reported two sail , close together , hove-to broad on our lee bow . The usual form of questions being duly put by Armitage , who happened to be the officer of the watch , the further information was elicited that one of them was a brig and the other a full-rigged ship , but of what nationality they were it was difficult to say , nothing but the heads of their topgallant-sails being visible above the horizon from our fore-topmast crosstrees . The matter being reported to Captain Vernon , orders were given for our course to be so altered as to allow of our edging down upon the strangers ; the fact of their being hove-to so close together having a somewhat suspicious appearance . By three o'clock p.m. we had neared the two vessels sufficiently to bring their hulls into view from the main-royal-yard ; they were then lying broadside-on to us with their heads to the eastward , the ship being between us and the brig ; but by the aid of our glasses we were able to make out that they had apparently dropped alongside each other , and the skipper gave it as his decided opinion that foul play was going on on the part of one or the other of the two craft .