Smellie came to the open skylight and spoke down through it:—
“I say, Chester, if it’s not troubling you too much, will you hand me up my glass, please? It is in the beckets, just inside the door of my berth. Here’s a strange sail to leeward, and I want to take a squint at her.”
I found the telescope, and carried it on deck myself. Master Harold slung it over his shoulder, and in another minute was perched on the long tapering yard of the lateen mainsail.
“What do you make her out to be?” I hailed him, after he had given her a careful overhauling for some three or four minutes.
“A frigate, without doubt,” he replied, his glass still levelled at her. “I can see her mizzen-royal-mast, with the yard across. Her sails are not large enough for a line-of-battle ship. Ha! she has hove in stays. Round she comes, smartly too. Why, she is setting her royals! Surely she can’t be coming after us?”
“As like as not,” returned I. “If we can see her, she can see us; and as a craft of our rig is a rather unusual sight just about here, it is not improbable that her skipper may wish to learn a little more about us. What is she—English or French, think you?”
“I believe she is French,” was the reply. “I had a good look at her canvas as she hove about, and it appeared to me to be decidedly Frenchified in shape.”
We were already hugging the wind as closely as was possible, and had every possible inch of canvas spread; so we could do nothing but stand on as we were going, and await the course of events.
Her sails rose rapidly above the horizon for the first hour or so, but after that, as we brought her more on our quarter, they began to sink again. When about abeam of us, the stranger hoisted the tricolour at her gaff-end, fired a gun, and showed a signal from her main-royal mast-head, of which we could make nothing. We, however, hoisted the French flag also, and left them to make the best they could of it. After the first signal had been flying some time, it was hauled down, and another substituted, but with no better luck than before, and it was soon hauled down.
“She is after us, for a guinea,” said I.