After consultation with my executive officer, I decided that my only hope of securing our prize before dark, when she would easily evade us, was to send a party in one of our boats in chase. Accordingly Mr. Bailey had the first cutter called away, the crew carefully armed, and a small Butler machine gun mounted in the bow of the boat.
The chase was now, as we estimated, nearly six miles distant; and as she was all the time forging ahead two or three knots an hour, there was a prospect of a good long pull for it. But the bait was a tempting one and the boat crew were very ready to make the effort.
I arranged with Acting Master Taylor, who was to go in charge of the boat, that if night should overtake him before he could return to the ship I would lay her to, fire guns at intervals, and hoist signal lanterns so that we could easily be seen. He also took with him a number of rockets and Coston’s signals to burn if needed.
With my best wishes for his success Mr. Taylor shoved off, and his men pulled lustily toward the schooner. It was not necessary to give the order to keep a sharp lookout on the movements of the boat, for every man in the ship felt a personal interest in her, and all hands were watching her progress, from the masthead lookouts to the mess cooks, who hung gazing out of the ports whenever they could escape for a moment from their duties.
To pull a heavy man-of-war cutter six or eight miles in a seaway is not child’s play; and although the men buckled to their oars like heroes, it was slow work. The sun was getting low when the officer of the deck called my attention from the boat I was watching so anxiously through the glass to a heavy bank of black clouds making to the northward.
“I am afraid that we are going to have our wind, now that we don’t want it, sir,” he said.
A vivid flash of lightning, emphasized by a rattling clap of thunder, followed hard upon this remark.
“Yes, indeed; you must get in your studding sails and flying kites at once, Mr. Allen, for it is coming down upon us by the run!”
Mr. Bailey came on deck and took the trumpet, as executive officer, the boatswain’s call sounded shrill, and the light sails came rapidly in.
“Furl the topgallant sails, sir!” I cried. And they were barely in when the wind was howling.