After overhauling her with his glass, the lieutenant remarked that she was “long, low, and rakish, but did not look much of a craft.”
Meanwhile, the steam was getting up in all the boilers, and the “Hermes” was closing on the chase.
The gunner was moving mysteriously about the deck with priming wires, vent bits, and detonating matches, evidently bent on mischief.
The watch below had all gone on deck, and the ship’s deck was crowded with anxious faces directed towards the chase.
The senior lieutenant, who was no stranger in these waters, having served as a midshipman in the ship of a well-known commodore on this station, spoken of to this day as “Old Ben Wyvell,” suddenly turned round, and facing the “bridge” on which the captain was looking out, exclaimed, “She’s about, sir—the chase has tacked.”
At the same moment the middy’s voice from the mast-head was heard:—
“The chase is in stays, sir!”—indicating that she was going about on the other tack.
Soon after, the stranger was observed to bear up, and crowding all sail, to steer for the land.
The excitement throughout the ship was now at its greatest pitch.