The lieutenant took a glass, and for a moment applied it to his eye, with the usual steadiness. Then he suffered the instrument to fall, and it would seem that he endeavored to recall the different flags that he had seen during the experience of many years.
“This joker should come from some terra incognita;” he said. “Here is a woman in his field, with an ugly countenance, too, unless the glass play me false—as I live, the rogue has her counterpart for a figure-head!—Will you look at the ladies, sir?”
Ludlow took the glass, and it was not without curiosity that he turned it toward the colors the hardy smuggler dared to exhibit, in presence of a cruiser. The vessels were, by this time, sufficiently near each other, to enable him to distinguish the swarthy features and malign smile of the sea-green lady, whose form was wrought in the field of the ensign, with the same art as that which he had seen so often displayed in other parts of the brigantine. Amazed at the daring of the free-trader, he returned the glass, and continued to pace the deck, in silence. There stood near the two speakers an officer whose head and form began to show the influence of time, and who, from his position, had unavoidably been an auditor of what passed. Though the eye of this person, who was the sailing-master of the sloop, was rarely off the threatening cloud, except to glance along the wide show of canvas that was spread, he found a moment to take a look at the stranger.
“A half-rigged brig, with her fore-top-gallant-mast fidded abaft, a double martingale, and a standing gaft;” observed the methodical and technical mariner, as another would have recounted the peculiarities of complexion, or of feature, in some individual who was the subject of a personal description. “The rogue has no need of showing his brazen-faced trull to be known! I chased him, for six-and-thirty hours, in the chops of St. George’s, no later than the last season; and the fellow ran about us, like a dolphin playing under a ship’s fore-foot. We had him, now on our weather bow, and now crossing our course, and, once in a while, in our wake, as if he had been a Mother Carey’s chicken looking for our crumbs. He seems snug enough in that cove, to be sure, and yet I’ll wager the pay of any month in the twelve, that he gives us the slip. Captain Ludlow, the brigantine under our lee, here, in Spermaceti, is the well-known Skimmer of the Seas!”
“The Skimmer of the Seas!” echoed twenty voices, in a manner to show the interest created by the unexpected information.
“I’ll swear to his character before any Admiralty Judge in England, or even in France, should there be occasion to go into an outlandish court—but no need of an oath, when here is a written account I took, with my own hands, having the chase in plain view, at noon-day.” While speaking, the sailing-master drew a tobacco-box from his pocket, and removing a coil of pig-tail, he came to a deposit of memorandums, that vied with the weed itself in colors. “Now, gentlemen,” he continued, “you shall have her build, as justly as if the master-carpenter had laid it down with his rule. ‘Remember to bring a muff of marten’s fur from America, for Mrs. Trysail—buy it in London, and swear’—this is not the paper—I let your boy, Mr. Luff, stow away the last entry of tobacco for me, and the young dog has disturbed every document I own. This is the way the government accounts get jammed, when Parliament wants to overhaul them. But I suppose young blood will have its run! I let a monkey into a church of a Saturday night myself, when a youngster, and he made such stowage of the prayer-books, that the whole parish was by the ears for six months; and there is one quarrel between two old ladies, that has not been made up to this hour.—Ah! here we have it:—‘Skimmer of the Seas.—Full-rigged forward, with fore-and-aft mainsail, abaft; a gaff-top-sail; taut in his spars, with light top-hamper; neat in his gear, as any beauty—Carries a ring-tail in light weather; main-boom like a frigate’s top-sail-yard, with a main-top-mast-stay-sail as big as a jib. Low in the water, with a woman figure-head; carries sail more like a devil than a human being, and lies within five points, when jammed up hard on a wind.’ Here are marks by which one of Queen Anne’s maids of honor might know the rogue; and there you see them all, as plainly as human nature can show them in a ship!”
“The Skimmer of the Seas!” repeated the young officers, who had crowded round the veteran tar, to hear this characteristic description of the notorious free-trader.
“Skimmer or flyer, we have him now, dead under our lee, with a sandy beach on three of his sides, and the wind in his eye!” cried the first-lieutenant.
“You shall have an opportunity, Master Trysail, of correcting your account, by actual measurement.”
The sailing-master shook his head, like one who doubted, and again turned his eye on the approaching cloud.