“Now they’re nearing it,” he murmured, with his eye glued to the tube. “I can see the craft clearly now; they’ve cast loose the guns and opened the ports; I can see the light of the lanterns shining through ’em. She’s creeping up to it pretty fast; but I guess we’ve walked away from it quite a considerable distance too. There! Now they’ve run aboard of that tarnation old water-barrel; they know what ’tis by this time, and I reckon the skipper of that frigate is ripping and tearing and cussing and going on till the air smells of brimstone for a quarter of a mile all round. Ah! just as I expected. They’ve hauled up to the nor’ard; her stern’s towards us, for I can see the lights shining out of her cabin-windows; and now every minute ’ll take us further apart. Waal, I’m glad I thought of laying for ’em with that old lantern; it’ll sorter tell ’em that we’re having a good laugh at ’em; won’t it, colonel?” turning to our friends and addressing Lance in high good-humour.
“Doubtless you have succeeded in greatly provoking them, if that was your object,” replied Lance; “but if I were in your place I don’t think I should feel quite easy in my mind yet. If that thunder-storm which has been brewing for so long were to break, as it may do at any moment, the flash of the lightning would be certain to reveal your whereabouts to them.”
“I reckon we’ll have to take our chance of that,” remarked Johnson in a more sober tone; “but let it keep dark half an hour longer, and I don’t care how much it lightens after that. Ah, tarnation! look at that.”
This last ejaculation was provoked by the sudden illumination of the northern heavens by a brilliant flash of sheet lightning, which revealed not only every detail of the vast bank of murky clouds which lay heaped up, as it were, upon the horizon, but also distinctly showed the frigate on its very verge, still holding steadily northward, her hull and sails standing out sharply like a block of ebony against the faint bluish gleam of the electric light.
Another flash soon followed, then another, and another, the flashes following each other with increasing rapidity, to Johnson’s manifest discomfiture; but, though he was evidently unaware of it, the brig was so far perfectly safe from discovery; for the lightning continued to flash up only in the northern quarter, leaving the remainder of the horizon veiled in impenetrable darkness; so that, though the frigate was distinctly revealed to the brig, the brig was completely hidden from the frigate.
The lightning, however, though it had not yet shown the brig’s whereabouts, had enabled those on board the frigate to ascertain that she was not ahead of them, as they had supposed, for when the next flash came the man-o’-war was seen nearly broadside-on to the brig, and heading about south-west, her captain having evidently come to the conclusion that the Albatross, after setting her lure, had doubled back like a hare upon her former course.
Johnson waited until another flash came, revealing the frigate still upon the same course, and then he gave orders for his vessel to be kept away, steering this time to the southward and eastward, or about at right angles to the course of the frigate. Ten minutes later the latter was hull-down.
“Now we’re safe!” ejaculated the pirate skipper delightedly. “Clew up and furl everything, lads, and be smart about it, for in another five minutes we’ll have the lightning flashing all round us; but under bare poles I guess it’ll take sharp eyes to pick us out.”
“Waal, colonel,” he remarked to Lance, shortly afterwards, “I reckon that was a narrer squeak for us, that was. If I’d been fool enough to go to the nor’ard, they’d have had us for sure. That’s a right smart frigate, that is; and I guess she’s a Yankee. You Britishers don’t build such smart boats as that. After this I’m bound more’n ever to have that schooner you promised to build for me, for I don’t mind owning up that I began to feel skeered a bit when I saw how we was bein’ catched up. Do you think, now, colonel, you could build a schooner that would have walked away from that frigate?”
“Oh dear, yes!” answered Lance, “I am quite sure I could; only, remember, I must not be interfered with in any way. I cannot have people troubling me with suggestions, or, worse still, insisting upon my grafting their ideas on to my own. The ship must be exclusively my own design, and then I can promise you we will turn out a craft capable, if need be, of running away from the fastest frigate that ever was launched.”