“Sail ho!” shouted one of the crew. On the quarter-deck, the captain, the mate, and Wyzinski still kept their anxious watch.
“What do you make her out, Williams?” asked Captain Weber.
“A schooner, sir, under easy sail, standing to the westward.”
Again the captain took the bearings of the dangerous-looking vessel, but with exactly the same result. There she was still on the brig’s weather quarter, and apparently in no sort of a hurry.
“The wicked-looking craft has the heels of us.” remarked the mate; “but we shall have a cap full of wind before long, and then we may tell a different tale.”
“She sees it too; there goes her fore-topsail. She is making sail,” said the captain; then, addressing a man who happened to be passing at the moment, “tell Captain Hughes and the foreign Don I should be glad to speak to them,” he added.
The schooner showed no flag, but setting her fore-topsail, edged a little nearer the wind, so as no longer to be running on a line parallel to the brig, but on one which would eventually bring them to the same spot. The two passengers soon stood on the deck.
“I have sent for you, gentlemen,” said the captain, raising his tarpaulin as he spoke, “to decide on our course. You see yonder schooner?”
All eyes were turned to the long, low black hull and the white canvas.
“Well, I have every reason to suppose she is a pirate, whose crew have committed great ravages in these seas. Several vessels have been chased by her, and one or two having a great number of passengers on board, the little craft, which sails like a witch, has neared them sufficiently to make this out, and has then put up her helm and made sail. But several vessels which are over due at different ports have never been heard of, not a vestige of them and their crews ever having been found. They have simply disappeared.”