And just then Bob Condy, who was aloft on the fore-t'gallant yard cutting off old seizings and putting on new ones, hailed the deck.
'There's a sail on the port beam, sir.'
'Take a glass aloft and have a look at her, Mr. M'Gill,' said the skipper. 'No, never mind; I'll go myself, as you've never seen the Battle-Axe at sea. I know the cut of her jib and no mistake.'
So Will Ryder went up on the main top-gallant yard, and with his leg astride of the yard took a squint to loo'ard. He shut up the glass so quick that his wife knew at once that the distant sail was the Battle-Axe. As he came down slowly he nodded to her.
'It is?'
'Rather,' said Ryder. 'I'm sorry we've no stunsails. We're carrying all we've got and all we can.'
'And to think he's as good as we were on our own point of sailing,' said his wife with the most visible vexation. 'Can't you do anything to make her go faster, Will?'
And when Will said he couldn't, unless he got out and pushed, Mrs. Ryder sat on a hen-coop and very nearly cried. For if the Battle-Axe had done so well up to this she would do better in the dead regions of the Line, and the Star would do much worse. There the want of a few more hands would tell. The Star was no good at catching 'cat's-paws' short-handed. She worked like an unoiled gate.
'If I'd only done what Silas Bagge wanted,' she said, 'we'd have been all right. To think that the want of a couple of hands should make all the difference!'
It was cruelly hard, but when vessels are under-manned at any time, less than their complement means 'pull devil pull baker,' with the devil best at the tug of war.