Snatching the signal book from the locker upon which it had been thrown, I dashed upon deck, and presently, by the light of the binnacle lamps, deciphered the signal as follows:
“Tack to south-east.”
“Right!” said I, “answer it. In studding-sails, Mr Simpson, and then heave about on the port tack. Keep your eye on the commodore, and also keep a bright look-out to windward for any sign of the chase.”
By the time that I got below again, and was once more seated at table, the schooner was in stays, and immediately afterwards the long, easy, floating and gliding movement of a vessel running off the wind was exchanged for the quick, violent, jerking plunge and heavy lee lurches of the same craft driven under a heavy pressure of canvas into a high and steep head-sea. Ten minutes later I was again on deck.
“I was just thinkin’, sir, of takin’ in the to’garns’l,” remarked Simpson as I joined him on the weather side of our tiny quarter-deck, where he was engaged in a futile endeavour to avoid the heavy showers of spray that were now flying over our weather bow and as far aft as the mainmast. “She’s got a good deal more than she can comfortably carry, and there’s nothin’ to be gained by whippin’ the sticks out of her. I believe she’d travel quite as fast, and a good deal easier, if that to’garns’l was stowed, sir.”
“Any sign of the chase yet, Mr Simpson?” said I.
“No, sir, not when I looked last, there wasn’t,” answered the carpenter. “The mischief of it is that there’s no knowin’ where to look for her, and it’s as much as a man can do to make out the commodore in this murk.”
“Where is the commodore?” demanded I.
“Out there, dead to wind’ard of us, and about four mile away,” answered Simpson. “Better take in the to’garns’l, hadn’t we, sir?” he continued, cocking his eye aloft to where in the dim light the spar could be faintly seen whipping and buckling like a fishing rod at every mad plunge and heave of the sorely-overdriven little vessel. That she was being overdriven was perfectly evident, not only from the tremendous quantity of water that she was shipping forward at every furious dive into the head-sea, but from the steep angle of her decks, which sloped at an inclination of fully forty-five degrees with every lee roll, and from the cataracts of green water that poured in over her lee rail upon every such occasion; her decks, indeed, to leeward were so flooded that no man could have passed along them to leeward without imminent risk of being washed overboard.
“Yes,” said I at last, “clew up your topgallant-sail, Mr Simpson, and the topsail also while you are about it. You are right, the ship is being over pressed, and I believe that what we may lose by taking the square canvas off her will be more than made up to us by our gain in weatherliness. She will look up nearly a point higher under her fore-and-aft canvas only, and go along very nearly as fast.”