“No! is she though?” eagerly enquired the captain, as he at length seized the spy-glass, twisting and turning it about and about, as he tried to hit his own very peculiar focus. At length he took a long, long, breathless look, while the eyes of the whole crew, some fifteen hands or so, were riveted upon him with the most intense anxiety.
“What a gaff-topsail she has got—my eye!—and a ringtail with more cloths in it than our squaresail—and the breeze comes down stronger and stronger!”
All this while I looked out equally excited, but with a very different interest. “Come, this will do,’ thought I; ‘she is after us; and if old Dick Casket brings that fiery sea-breeze he has now along with him, we shall puzzle the smuggler, for all his long start.”
“There’s a gun, sir,” cried Paul, trembling from head to foot.
“Sure enough,” said the skipper; “and it must be a signal. And there go three flags at the fore.—She must, I’ll bet a hundred dollars, have taken our tidy little Wave for the Admiral’s tender that was lying in Morant Bay.”
“Blarney,” thought I; “tidy as your little Wave is, she won’t deceive old Dick—he is not the man to take a herring for a horse; she must be making signals to some man-of-war in sight.”
“A strange sail right a-head,” sung out three men from forward all at once.
“Didn’t I say so?”—I had only thought so. “Come, Master Obediah, it thickens now, you’re in for it,” said I.
But he was not in the least shaken; as the matter grew serious, he seemed to brace up to meet it. He had been flurried at the first, but he was collected and cool as a cucumber now, when he saw every thing depending on his seamanship and judgment. Not so Paul, who seemed to have made up his mind that they must be taken.
“Jezebel Brandywine, you are but a widowed old lady, I calculate. I shall never see the broad, smooth Chesapeake again—no more peach brandy for Paul;” and folding his arms, he set himself doggedly down on the low tafferel.