CHAPTER XVII.
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING.
"What is she, Jack?" said Marcy, in a suppressed whisper. "Do you make her out?"
His voice was husky, and he trembled as he asked the question, for he knew by the exclamation that fell from his brother's lips that those white sails were things he did not like to see.
"I make her out easy enough, in spite of her disguise," was Sailor Jack's reply. "And I would rather meet all the gunboats in Uncle Sam's navy than her."
"Disguise!" Marcy almost gasped. "You surely don't think——"
"No, I don't think anything about it," Jack interposed. "I know that that is Captain Beardsley's schooner. I wish from the bottom of my heart that she had been sunk or captured before she ever caught us here; but it is too late to get away from her. She will go by within less than twenty yards of us."
"And do you think Beardsley will know the Fairy Belle in her new dress?" asked Marcy, who had never before been so badly frightened.
"Being an old sailor he can't help it."
"Of course he will mistrust what brought us out here, and spread it all through the settlement," added Marcy.