Five minutes later we were speeding gaily away, with the wind over our starboard quarter and the sheets eased well off, the gig, with her finer lines and lighter freight, revealing so marked a superiority in speed over the longboat, in the light weather and smooth water with which we were just then favoured, that she was compelled to luff and shake the wind out of her sails at frequent intervals to enable us to keep pace with her. Meanwhile, the pirate brig, which, like ourselves, had gone off before the wind, had sunk below the horizon to the level of her lower yards. I had, between whiles, been keeping the craft under fairly steady observation, for what Simpson had said relative to the behaviour of her captain, and the attitude of doubt and suspicion which the latter had exhibited when leaving the Dolores, had impressed me with the belief that he would possibly cause a watch to be maintained upon the schooner until she should sink, with the object of assuring himself that none of us had escaped to tell the tale of his atrocious conduct. As I have already mentioned, the Dolores happened to founder at the precise moment of sunset, and in those latitudes the duration of twilight is exceedingly brief. Still, following upon sunset there were a few minutes during which the light would be strong enough to enable a sharp eye on board the distant brig, especially if aided by a good glass, to detect the presence of the two boats under sail; and I was curious to see whether anything would occur on board the brig to suggest that such a discovery had been made. For a few minutes nothing happened; the brig’s canvas, showing up clear-cut and purple almost to blackness against the gold and crimson western sky, revealed no variation in the direction in which she was steering; but presently, as I watched the quick fading of the glowing sunset tints, and noted how the sharp silhouette of the brig’s canvas momentarily grew more hazy and indistinct, I suddenly became aware of a lengthening out of the fast-fading image, and I had just time to note, ere they merged into the quick-growing gloom, that the two masts had separated, showing that the brig had shifted her course and was now presenting a broadside view to us. That I was not alone in marking this change was evidenced a moment later when, as we drew up alongside the gig, which had been waiting for us, Simpson hailed me with the question:
“Did ye notice, sir, just afore we lost sight of the brig, that he’d hauled his wind?”
“Yes,” said I, “I did. And I have a suspicion that he has done so because he had a hand aloft to watch for and report the sinking of the schooner; and that hand has caught sight of the boats. If my suspicion is correct, he has waited until he believed we could no longer see him, and has then hauled his wind in the hope that by making a series of short stretches to windward he will fall in with us in the course of an hour or two and be able to make an end of us. He probably waited until we had been lost sight of in the gathering darkness, and then shifted his helm, forgetful of the fact that his canvas would show up against the western sky for some few minutes after ours had vanished.”
“That’s just my own notion, sir,” answered Simpson, “I mean about his wishin’ to fall in with and make an end of us. And he’ll do it, too, unless we can hit upon some plan to circumvent him.”
“Quite so,” said I. “But we must see to it that we do not again fall into his hands. And to avoid doing so I can think of nothing better than to shift our own helm and shape a course either to the northward or the southward, with the wind about two points abaft the beam; by doing which we may hope to get to leeward of the brig in about two hours from now, when we can resume our course for Sierra Leone with a reasonable prospect of running the brig out of sight before morning. And, as she was heading to the northward when we last saw her, our best plan will be to steer a southerly course. So, up helm, Simpson, and we will steer west-south-west for the next two hours, keeping a sharp look-out for the brig, meanwhile, that we may not run foul of her unawares.”
We had been steering our new course about an hour when it became apparent that a change of weather was brewing, though what the nature of the impending change might be it was, for the moment, somewhat difficult to guess. The appearance of the sky seemed to portend a thunderstorm, for it had rapidly become overcast with dense masses of heavy, lowering cloud, which appeared to have quite suddenly gathered from nowhere in particular, obscuring the stars, yet not wholly shutting out their light, for the forms of the cloud-masses could be made out with a very fair degree of distinctness, and it would probably also have been possible to distinguish a ship at the distance of a mile. It was the presence of this light in the atmosphere, emanating apparently from the clouds themselves, that caused me rather to doubt the correctness of the opinion, pretty freely expressed by the men, that what was brewing was nothing more serious than an ordinary thunderstorm, for I had witnessed something of the same kind before, on the coast, but in a much more marked degree, it is true; and in that case the appearance had been followed by a tornado, brief in duration, but of great violence while it lasted. I therefore felt distinctly anxious, the more so as it was evident that the wind was dropping, and this I regarded as a somewhat unfavourable sign. I hailed Simpson, and asked him what he thought of the weather.
“Why, sir,” replied he, “the wind’s droppin’, worse luck; and if it should happen to die away altogether, or even to soften down much more, we shall have to out oars and pull; for we must get out of sight of that brig somehow, between this and to-morrow morning.”
“Undoubtedly,” said I. “But that is not precisely what I mean. What is worrying me just now is the question whether there is anything worse than thunder behind the rather peculiar appearance of the sky.”
He directed his glance aloft, attentively studying the aspect of the heavens for a few moments.
“It’s a bit difficult to say, sir,” he replied at last. “Up to now I’ve been thinkin’ that it only meant thunder and, perhaps, heavy rain; but, now that you comes to mention it, I don’t feel so very sure that there ain’t wind along with it, too—perhaps one of these here tornaders. And if that’s what’s brewin’ we shall have to stand by, and keep our weather eye liftin’; for a tornader’d be an uncommon awk’ard customer to meet with in these here open boats.”