“The next morning, however, when I took the deck, I found the corvette under royals and flying-jib, with a fresh trade wind blowing from about east-northeast, and a smooth sea; though close hauled as we were, and going ten knots, the spray was flying well up the weather leech of the fore-sail. The ‘Centipede’ was about a mile and a half ahead, jammed on the wind, and trying all she could to eat the wind out of us; but, as the commodore there said at the time, he had thrown that trick away when he cut off eight or ten feet of his fore-mast, 221 and made a brigantine of the craft, so that he could not brace his head-yards sharper, or lie nearer the wind than we did.
“I remember, also, that two or three of the officers and half a hundred of the sailors were very anxious to pitch shot at the chase from the long eighteen in the weather bridle port; but the captain refused, and said we might lose a cable’s length or two in yawing off to fire, and it would be better to save the powder until we could slam a broadside into him. But all the while that ‘Centipede’ was handled and steered in such a thorough seamanlike manner, and proved herself such a beautiful sea-boat, that I doubt if there was a man on board the ‘Scourge’ who would not have given a year’s pay to have taken her whole, and only expended a spare top-mast studding-sail halliards for the necks of her crew.
“From the top-gallant forecastle we could see every thing that took place on the schooner’s deck: sometimes a lot of fellows forward reeving some fresh gear, peering about the low bowsprit, or putting on a seizing to a traveler on the jib-stay; with a chap or two aloft stitching a chafing-mat on the lee backstays; and then aft a man shinning up the main shrouds with a tin pot hung around his neck, greasing the jaws of the main gaff, and twitching a wrinkle out of the gaff-top-sail, so that it would lie as flat as this dining-room table set on end.
“But always, from the very first moment we descried her––before the hurricane and afterward––there were two fellows abaft by the taffrail. One a large fat man, in a long dark dress, who appeared at times to be leaning over the rail as if he were sea-sick; and the other a spare, tall-built fellow, who sat there with a quadrant in his hands and smoking cigars, measuring the distance between the two vessels as if he were a government surveyor, and especially appointed to make a hydrographical chart of the Caribbean Sea. Occasionally, too, we could see him approach the binnacle, spread a chart on the deck at his feet, examine it closely with a pair of dividers in his hands, and then he would return to his seat on the taffrail, cigar in his mouth and quadrant to his eye as before.
“Nor were we idle on board the ‘Scourge;’ for when the breeze lulled we slacked up the lower rigging and stays, got down all extra weight and hamper from the tops, sent the watch below to the berth-deck with a round shot apiece in their hammocks, moved a couple of carronades about the spar-deck till we got the ship in the best sailing trim, and then we went skipping and springing through the water with the elasticity of an India-rubber ball.
“At noon the sailing-master reported the position of the ship to be two hundred and eighty miles from the nearest land, which was the Darien Coast. So all that day and all that night, with a moon to make a lover weep to see, we went bowling after our waspish 222 consort in hopes before long of taking the sting out of her. No kite ever pursued its quarry with a keener eye than we did. No hound ever leaped after a wolf with the froth streaming from his jaws and blood-red thirsty eyes, than did the ‘Scourge’ chase that infamous pirate. The delay only made our eyes sparkle and our teeth sharper in expectation; for we knew we would have our prey sooner or later, and it was only a bite and a pleasure deferred.
“The next morning and all the day there was no change to speak of in our respective positions. The ‘Centipede’ went skimming on over the water with every thread of canvas she could spread, reeling over on her side at times when the breeze freshened, while the spray flashed up joyously and sparkled in the sun, leaving a bubbling current of foam in her wake, which, before it had been entirely lost in the regular waves of the sea, the corvette’s sharp bows would plunge into, and again make it flash high up to her fore-yard, and then go seething, and hissing, and kissing her black sides until it rippled around her rudder and was lost again in the wake astern.
“And all the time that man sat with a cigar in his mouth on the pirate’s taffrail, while Commodore Cleveland there stood with a spy-glass to his eye on the poop of the ‘Scourge.’
“You may imagine, gentlemen,” continued Hardy, as he again knocked the ashes off his cigar, “that going to sea is attended with some few discomforts, such as battening down the hatches in a sirocco in the Mediterranean off Tripoli; a simoom in the China Seas; a bitter northwest gale off Barnegat, with the rigging and sails frozen as hard as an iceberg; but if a man can catch forty winks of sleep once in a while, whether in a hammock, or on an oak carronade slide with the breech of a gun for a pillow, he may manage to weather through it. But from the moment we first saw that pirate till we saw the last of him, neither the first lieutenant of the ‘Scourge’ nor the commander of the ‘Centipede’ once closed their eyes, unless––well, I won’t anticipate.”
Piron reached over his hand and shook that of his friend Cleveland convulsively.