“Not yet, sir, surely!”
“No, not yet; we will let them run two or three miles dead to leeward, and then follow them till daylight, or till they see us, when, of course, they will be after us.”
“It’s very fortunate, sir, that we did furl the sails; for had they come down, and we under sail, they would have seen us, and we should have been to leeward of them, which would have given us a poor chance against such odds; now we shall have the weather-gage, and may choose, if our heels are as good as theirs, which I expect they are, if not better.”
“I shall fight them in some shape or another, Bob, you may depend upon it.”
“Of course you will, Mr Keene, or you’ll disappoint us all. The ship’s company have every confidence in you, I can tell you.”
“Thanks to your long yarns, Bob, I presume.”
“Thanks to my telling the truth, Mr Keene. The schooner is right astern of us now, so there’s the weather-gage gone—thank God!”
We remained as we were till I considered the two vessels sufficiently to leeward, and the sails were then set upon the Firefly, and first running to the eastward, so as to get right in the wind’s eye of them, I put the helm up, and followed them. We had continued our course in their wake for about an hour, when day dawned, and the schooner, who had discovered us, fired a gun as a signal to her concert.
“So you’ve found us out at last, have you?” said Bob Cross—“at all events, we keep a better look-out than you do, old fellow.”
Shortly after the gun was fired, both vessels hauled to the wind on the larboard tack, and we did the same: being about four miles to windward of the schooner and five or five and a half of the brig, we could now examine our adversaries. The schooner was, apparently, about the same tonnage as the Firefly, a very beautiful vessel with her masts raking over her stern. She was painted black, and we could not ascertain, at first, how many guns she carried, as her ports were shut; but after a short time she knocked out her half ports to prepare for action, and then we discovered that she carried twelve guns, but not a long gun on a swivel like the one on board of the Firefly. I observed this to Cross, who replied, “Then, sir, all we have to do now is to try our rate of sailing with them, and if we are faster than they are we have not much to fear—unless we lose a spar, indeed; but luck’s all, Mr Keene. The schooner has more sail on her than we have; shall we set exactly the same?”