There was not much to be learned by looking at the stranger from the level of the deck.  I therefore slung the glass over my shoulder and made my way aloft as far as the main cross-trees, from which a full view of her was to be obtained.  But before so much as taking a single look at her through the telescope, her behaviour assured me that she must be either a ship of war, or a craft of decidedly suspicious character.  For no ordinary trader would be lying hove-to, just where she was; the inference therefore was indisputable that, if not a man-o'-war, she must be lurking just off the entrance of the Windward Passage for some unlawful purpose.  If by any chance the craft in sight should prove to be the one that we were after, I believed that I should be able to recognise her upon my first glimpse of her through the telescope.  When I got aloft and brought my instrument to bear upon her, I found, however, that she was just in the very thick of the dazzle of the newly risen sun, and it was not until I had been aloft quite a quarter of an hour that I was able to see her at all distinctly.  Even then I could discern no details of painting; I could not make out whether her hull was painted black or green, whether she had painted ports, or merely a narrow ribbon, or had neither.  She showed against the strong light of the eastern horizon simply as a dainty jet-black silhouette, rising and falling lazily upon the long swell.  But after looking long and steadfastly at her I came to the conclusion, in the first instance, that she was not a man-o'-war, and, in the next, that her general shape and style of rig were sufficiently familiar to justify me in the belief, or at least the suspicion, that I had seen her before.  At all events it was my obvious duty to get near enough to her to enable me to ascertain what business she had to be lying-to just where we had happened to find her, and I accordingly gave Simpson instructions to make sail, and then see all clear for action.