“She is a pleasure-boat measuring about fifteen tons,” replied the man; “she is a very strange-looking craft, but she sails like the wind. She is the property of one of the French officers, who built her for his own amusement.”
“Then,” said I, “if she is likely to suit us, we will certainly make a prize of her without compunction. Lead on, my man, and let us see if we can find her.”
We went on some distance further until we came to the waterside, not meeting with a single soul on the way, and there we helped ourselves to a rowing-boat and pulled out into the bay, where, according to Giaccomo’s account, we should find her if she then happened to be in port.
We pulled through a large fleet of fishing-boats, coasting feluccas, and other craft, mostly of a size ranging from two to fifty tons, and at length, just as I was beginning to think our search would be in vain, Giaccomo exclaimed,—
“There she is!”
I looked in the direction indicated, and saw a long low-hulled craft, cutter-rigged, with what struck me as a set of spars altogether disproportionate to her size.
“Oh!” I exclaimed in a tone of disappointment, “she will never do. Why, she would capsize with half a capful of wind.”
“By no means, signor,” replied the Corsican. “Though yew would never believe it, to look at her, she carries her canvas better and longer than any boat belonging to Ajaccio, and as for working to windward—she is simply astounding.”
“If that be so,” said I, “let us paddle up alongside and take a look at her.”
We did so, and on a nearer inspection found her to be, according to the then prevalent ideas concerning naval architecture, quite as extraordinary as Giaccomo had described her to be. She was about five times as long as she was wide, with a bow like a fine wedge, a good clean run, and very little freeboard; she was in fact a singular foreshadowing of the modern type of racing cutter, and consequently, at that date, absolutely unique.