This is a digression, is it? Call me to order, then; but I shall digress if I choose, and after a wild fight like Balaklava, and with another still more awful battle hanging over my head, it is no wonder that I should want a very brief breathing-spell. Well, where can men breathe better, I should like to know, than on the ocean wave? So let us get afloat again, if only for a day.
Look at her there, on this bright morning in late October, bobbing and courtesying to every dark-blue wave that goes singing past her dark sides—our own bonnie Gurnet once again. There is a spanking breeze blowing; the wake astern of her is hardly any length at all, for the rippling, racing seas soon obliterate every bubble. There is life, there is health in this jolly breeze; it braces one up, pulis one together, till there isn't a loose tendon or nerve anywhere about one's whole system.
Six bells in the morning watch, but Midshipman Mackenzie is on deck already, and walking the quarter-deck with Sturdy. Rapidly fore and aft they tread, sometimes beating their gloved hands to instil a little extra glow into them, sometimes stowing them away in the outside pockets of their uniform reefing jackets. The ship has been cruising off Odessa, but is now making all sail south for the port of Balaklava.
"What is that out yonder on our weather-bow?" says Jack.
"A sail, and a Russian, too," replies Sturdy, after a squint through his glass. "Wonder what the dickens she wants in our Black Sea. Come, we'll luff, and see what her game is. Can we carry a bit more canvas?"
"Yes, sir, lots, if you ask me."
"Then I think I'll crack on."
At eight o'clock the sail sighted became a chase. She had put about, and was going full before the wind. As fleet as an ocean greyhound was she, so the good Gurnet had to get up steam, for the wind began to fail.
An hour after breakfast the Gurnet was near enough to fire a shot over her, then another, but with no effect.
"Give her one now," cried Captain Gillespie—"straight."