"Hullo!" he sings out. "What's yonder to windward?"
The lad he'd relieved jumps up from where he'd been napping beside the bitts, and runs forward. But, whatever he sang out, Jacka paid no attention; for by this time his own one eye had told him all he wanted to know, and a trifle more; and he clutched at the wheel for a moment like a man dazed. Then, I believe, a sort of heavenly joy crept over his face, mixed with a sort of heavenly cunning.
"Call up the crew," he ordered. "I'm going to put her about. The whole crew—every man-Jack of them!"
By the time the men tumbled up, Jacka had his helm up, and the Van der Werf, with sheets pinned, was leaning to it and knocking up the unholiest sputter.
"All right, my lads. Don't stand glazing at me like stuck pigs.
Stand by to slacken sheets. I'm going to gybe her."
Well, they obeyed, though not a man of them could guess what he was after. Over went the big mainsail with a jerk that must have pitched Captain Cornelisz clean out of his bunk below; for half a minute later he comes puffing and growling up the companion and wanting to know in his best Dutch if this was the end of the world, and if not, what was it?
"That's capital," says Jacka, "for I was just about stepping down to call you. See that lugger, yonder?" He jerked his thumb over his shoulder at a speck in the grey from which the Van der Werf was now running at something like nine knots an hour.
"Well?"
"I know that lugger, and we're running away from her."
"Pack of stuff!" says Captain Cornelisz, or Dutch to that effect.
"D'ee want to be told a dozen times that this is a licensed ship?"
And he called for his flag, to hoist it.