Day after day the wind continued to blow mildly from the west, and the brig still made regular but slow progress before it, on her south-eastwardly course.
One morning, before sunrise, a strange sail was espied upon the larboard bow. It was during Mr Afton’s watch that this discovery was made. The second-lieutenant pronounced the stranger to be a merchant ship. This fact, with the opinion of the officer of the watch, being communicated to the commander of the brig, who was still in his hammock, and whom we must now call Captain Vance, orders were given by him to crowd all sail on the Falcon, and to pursue the stranger ship.
Hour after hour passed away, and still the pirate vessel continued to gain on the chase, which had in the meanwhile been discovered to be a large and heavily-laden ship.
Mile after mile the brig gained while the wind lasted; but towards two o’clock the light breeze, which had been blowing from the same point so many days, began to die away, and by noon there was an absolute calm. The brig was at this time still many miles distant from the ship. For more than an hour each vessel remained, except as affected by that unceasing swell (in this instance scarcely perceptible) which never allows the water to be perfectly tranquil, as motionless as—
“A painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.”
Between one and two o’clock, clouds, in masses at first comparatively light, but which grew dense and denser, began to move overhead from the east towards the west; these were evidently impelled by a wind travelling in the same direction, and light flaws of which occasionally made faint shadows over the ocean by slightly stirring its waters, and sometimes gave a soft pulsation to the sails of the two vessels.
Shortly after two o’clock, lightning flashes gleamed in rather quick succession, from below the eastern horizon; but no thunder was heard. At length a small portion of densely black cloud showed itself in the same direction, above the line dividing the ocean and sky. This cloud rapidly rose, spreading itself as it ascended, while flashes of lightning, followed, after fast-diminishing intervals, by grand and grander thunder-burst, flamed forth more and more frequently, from the dark and threatening mass of vapour.
Soon blasts of wind, heavily laden with moisture, and each more powerful than that which preceded it, came with rapidly decreasing lulls, from the west, until the breeze, having at length become continuous, had grown almost to a storm. Both vessels had prepared for this increased force of the wind by shortening sail. The chase, however, urged by the necessity of escaping as well from the brig which pursued her as from the storm, still carried all the canvas which she could bear under the heavy pressure of the wind, almost directly before which both vessels were now steering an east-north-east course. Still the brig, built after the Baltimore clipper model, so famed for fleetness, continued to gain rapidly upon the ship.
“Suppose, captain,” said Afton, addressing Marston, “we range the ‘Long Tom’ to bear upon her, and give her a shot?”
“There is no chance of hitting her,” answered the captain, “with the brig beginning to pitch in the way she is now; it will be but waste of powder. Besides, the distance is too great.”