A short inspection sufficed, and the news hurried the captain and Mr Anderson on deck.
“A schooner. The same rig!” exclaimed the captain, without taking his glass from his eye. “What do you make of her, Mr Anderson?”
“A schooner, sure enough, sir. The same heavy raking spars and spread of sails. It looks too good to be true, sir.”
“Hah! Then you think it is the same craft?”
“Yes,—no—I daren’t say, sir,” replied the lieutenant; “but if it is not it’s a twin vessel.”
“Yes,” said the captain, closing his glass with a snap. “We’ll say it’s the Yankee slaver, and keep to that till she proves to be something else.”
Holding to that belief, every stitch of canvas that could be crowded on was sent aloft, and a pleasant breeze beginning to dimple the water as the sun arose, the spirits of all on board the sloop rose as well. Soon, however, it began to be perfectly plain that the schooner sighted paid no heed whatever to the sloop of war, but kept on her course, sailing in a way that proved her to be unusually fast and able to hold her own so well that the spirits of those on the Seafowl began to sink again.
“Now we shall see what she’s made of, Dick,” said Murray excitedly, when a blank charge was fired.
“Made of impudence,” said Roberts quietly; “but there’s no doubt about her being the craft we want,” he continued, “for she means to set us at defiance, and she’s going to make a run for it, and you see if she doesn’t escape.”
“If she does,” cried Murray impetuously, “I shall say it’s a shame for the Government to send the captain out with such a crawler as the Seafowl. Why, for such a duty we ought to have the fastest sailer that could be built and rigged.”