Bartelot now ordered the vessel's course to be altered due south; the tacks to be brought aft, the fore-and-aft canvas to be reduced, the studding-sails to be set, and each, before it was hoisted out, was well drenched by buckets of water, to make the canvas draw better; and from the tops and cross-trees the courses and topsails underwent a similar process. The royals were set, and little triangular skysails above them, too; thus, in a very few minutes, the Princess was flying right before the wind under a mighty spread of canvas.
The morning breeze was fresh and increasing, and as she tore through the glittering water at the rate of ten knots an hour, deeply laden as she was, it literally smoked under her bows, and flew over her dripping catheads, while her new wake was one of white froth, like a mill-race, extending at an acute angle from the old one.
"Hah! look there—how well I knew she was bent on mischief!" exclaimed Bartelot. A white puff, reduced by distance to the size of a whiff of tobacco, escaped from, her lee-bow, and a long time after, for she was nine miles or so astern, the report of a cannon came over the water, but still no colours were displayed. "I knew it would come to this; round goes her foretopsail-yard square before the wind."
With man-o'-war-like rapidity she, too, altered her course, set her fore-royal, her fore-top and top-gallant studding-sails, easing off the long spanker-boom and sheet of her enormous fore-and-aft mainsail, above which, on a mast that tapered away aloft like a fishing-rod, she hoisted a tall, shoulder-of-mutton gaff-topsail.
Fast flew the foam before her now, rising at times so high as to hide nearly her black hull, the fulcrum above which this cloud of canvas swayed as she rolled heavily from side to side; but, sharply though she was built, and swiftly as she had hitherto run upon the wind, she was no match before it for a square-rigged vessel like the Princess, with her greater spread of sail.
So now she was left astern as fast as previously she had been overhauling the Princess, and as both were now trimmed dead before the wind, each rolled heavily from side to side.
This too-evident pursuit caused considerable excitement, and no small anxiety on board; for, with the exception of a revolver of Tom Bartelot's, and a couple of fowling-pieces, the crew had no arms whatever, save handspikes and their sheath knives, with which to encounter the pirate, if such she proved to be.
That she was not a ship of war was evident, as she did not possess steam power, and carried neither ensign nor pennant at this juncture; so, whatever her object was, Tom Bartelot, in his present defenceless condition, was resolved to avoid her acquaintance, and continued to run due south during the whole day, for though she was left astern, the brigantine still continued to pursue them, with four long sweeps out, which her crew worked amidships; but, about the middle of the first dog-watch, viz., four o'clock P.M., she was more than hull down at the horizon.
Clouds were banking up to windward; the weather was becoming hazy; but while daylight lasted, Bartelot did not alter his southern course, though he took in some of his studdingsails, and sent down his royals and skysails.
When darkness had fairly set, he reduced the last of his studdingsails, set his fore and mainstay sail, brought the starboard tacks on board, and kept the ship upon her former course, after being forced by this little rencontre on the high seas to run about 100 miles out of it, for the ship had gone for more than ten hours at an average of ten knots per hour by the log-line.