Anxious though I was as to the issue of the coming tussle, I could not help admiring that brig.  She was a truly beautiful craft; distinctly a bigger vessel than the _Shark_, longer, more beamy, with sides as round as an apple, and with the most perfectly moulded bows that it was possible to conceive.  She was coming very nearly stem-on to us, and I could not therefore see her run, but I had no doubt that it was as perfectly shaped as were her bows, for I estimated her speed at fully eight knots, and for a vessel to travel at that rate in such a breeze she must of necessity have possessed absolute perfection of form.  She was as heavily rigged as a man-o'-war, and her canvas--which was so white that it must have been woven of cotton--had evidently been cut by a master hand, for the set of it was perfect and flatter than any I had ever seen before.  She was coppered to the bends, was painted black to her rails, with the exception of a broad red ribbon round her, and was pierced for eighteen guns.