At present, however, she did nothing, only held on steadily on her course, which nevertheless was ominous enough, for this action told plainly that she had seen us leave the river, or she would have remained luffing about there still. And, also, she must have known we were not French, for what French ship would have been allowed to come out of the Maas as we had come?
She did nothing, I have said; yet was not that sleuth-like following of hers something? Did it not expound the thoughts of her captain as plainly as though he had uttered them in so many words? Did it not tell that he was in doubt as to who and what we were; that he set off against the suspicious fact of our having quitted the river, which bristled with the enemies of France, the other facts, namely, that our ship was built French fashion, that maybe he could read her French name on her stern, and that she flew the French flag?
Yet what puzzled us more than aught else was, how had the frigate known that we had so got out? The night had been dark and black, and we showed no lights.
Still she knew it.
The day drew on and, with it, the sea abated a little, so that the tumbling waves, which had often obscured the frigate from us for some time, and, doubtless, us from it, became smoother, and Tandy, who had never taken his eye off the great ship, turned round and gave now an order to the men to hoist more sail. Also another to the man at the wheel to run in a point.
Then he came to where I was standing, and said:
"She draws a little nearer; I fear they will bring us to. Ha! as I thought." And even as he spoke there came a puff from the frigate's side; a moment later the report of a gun; another minute, and, hopping along the waves went a big round shot, some fifty yards ahead of us.
"What will you do?" I asked the captain. "The next will not be so far ahead."
"Run for it," he said. "They may not hit us--short of a broadside--and if I can get in another mile or so they cannot follow. Starboard, you below," he called out again to the man at the wheel, and once more bellowed his orders to the men aloft.
This brought the ship's head straight for where the land was--we could see it plain enough with the naked eye, lying flat and low, ten miles away--also it brought our stern to the frigate, so that we presented nothing but that to them--a breadth of no more than between twenty and twenty-five feet.