Now, although we were fully convinced that the craft in sight was a slaver, yet we had no thought whatever of attempting to take her just then, for the very simple reason that to do so under the circumstances would be a manifest impossibility.  In such an awful sea as was then running we could only work our guns at very infrequent intervals and with the utmost difficulty, while, if we were to hit her, we would do so only by the merest accident.  And even if we could contrive by any means to compel her to surrender to us, we could not take possession of her. Our interest in her was therefore no greater than that with which a sailor, caught in a heavy gale, watches the movements of another ship in the same predicament as his own.