While the men were coming on deck, Bentley leaped into the mizzen rigging and ran up the shrouds with an agility surprising in one of his gigantic figure and advanced age. After a rapid survey he came down swiftly. "It's an English frigate, and not a doubt of it, sir, and rising very fast."
"I thought so. Man the weather braces! Up with the helm! Bear a hand now, my hearties! Now, then, all together! Brace in!" He himself set a good example to the short crew, who hastened to obey his rapid commands, by assisting the two seamen stationed aft to brail in the spanker, in which labor he was speedily joined by Talbot, who had come on deck. Young Wilton and Bentley lent the same assistance forward, and in an astonishingly brief time, considering her small crew, the Mellish, like the stranger, was going free with the wind on her quarter, her best point of sailing, her course now making a wide obtuse angle with that of the approaching ship.
"Now, then, men, lay aloft, and shake the reefs out of the topsails.
Stand by to loose the fore and main topgallantsails as well."
"Why, what's wrong, Seymour?" said Talbot, in surprise. "I rather expected we should be in Massachusetts Bay this evening, and here we are, heading south again. Isn't that Cape Cod,—that blue haze yonder? Why are we leaving it? What's the matter?"
"Take the glass, man; there, aft on the starboard quarter, a sail! You should be able to see her from the deck now. Can you make her out?"
"Yes, by heaven, it's a ship, and a large ship too! What is it, think you, Seymour?"
"An English ship, of course, a frigate; we have no ships like that in these waters, or in our navy, either—more's the pity."
"Whew! This looks bad for us."
"Well, we 're not caught yet by a long sight, Talbot. A good many leagues will have to be sailed before we are overhauled, and there 's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip, you know; that old stale maxim is truer on the sea than any place else, and truer in a chase, too; a thousand things may help us or hinder her. See, we are going better now that the reefs are out and the topgallantsails set. But it's a fearful strain on our spars. They look new—pray God they be good ones," he continued, gazing over the side at the masses of green water tossed aside from the bows and sweeping aft under the counter in great swirls.
The spars and rigging of the Mellish were indeed fearfully tested, the masts buckling and bending like a strained bow. The wind was freshening every moment, and there was the promise of a gale in the lowering sky of the gray afternoon. The ship felt the increased pressure from the additional sail which had been made, and her speed had materially increased, though she rolled and pitched frightfully, wallowing through the water and smashing into the waves with her broad, fat bows, and making rather heavy weather of it. In spite of all this, however, the chase gained slowly upon them, until she was now visible to the naked eye from the decks of the Mellish. Seymour, full of anxiety, tried every expedient that his thorough seamanship and long experience could dictate to accelerate the speed of his ship,—rather a sluggish vessel at best, and now, heavily laden, slower than ever. The stream anchors were cut away, and then one of the bowers also; all the boats, save one, the smallest, were scuttled and cast adrift; purchases were got on all the sheets and halliards, and the sails hauled flat as boards, and kept well wetted down; some of the water tanks were pumped out, to alter the trim and lighten her; the bulwarks and rails partly cut away, and, as a final resort, the maintopmast studdingsail was set, but the boom broke at the iron and the whole thing went adrift in a few moments. Talbot, anxious to do something, suggested the novel expedient of breaking out a field-piece from the fore hold and mounting it on the quarter-deck to use as a stern-chaser. This had been done, but the frigate was yet too far away for it to be of any service.