It was about five bells in the forenoon watch, and it had by that time grown light enough for us to discern objects at a distance of about a mile, when, as the schooner was tossed aloft to the crest of an exceptionally gigantic wave, Simpson--whose watch it was--and I simultaneously caught sight for a moment of something that, indistinctly seen as it was through the dense clouds of flying scud-water, had the appearance of a ship of some kind, directly to windward of us.  The next instant we lost sight of it as we sank into the trough between the wave that had just passed beneath us and that which was sweeping down upon us.  When we topped this wave soon afterwards, we again caught sight of the object, and this time held her in view long enough to identify her as a large brigantine, hove-to, like ourselves, on the starboard tack, under a storm-staysail.  Unlike ourselves, however, she had all her top- hamper aloft, forward, and seemed to be making desperately bad weather of it.  The glimpses that we caught of her were of course very brief, and at comparatively long intervals, for it was only when both craft happened to be on the summit of a wave at the same moment that we were able to see her.  Yet two facts concerning her gradually became clear to us, the first of which was that she was undoubtedly a slaver--so much her short, stumpy masts and the enormous longitudinal spread of her yards told us,--the second was that she was steadily settling down to leeward at a more rapid rate than ourselves, as was only to be expected from the fact that she was exposing much more top-hamper to the gale than we were.  It would not be long, therefore, before she would drive away to leeward of us, probably passing us at no very great distance.