‘But the cut of her as she shows yonder proves her the “Shark,” you think?’
‘I do, sir,’ he answered emphatically.
‘Well,’ said I, fetching a deep breath, ‘after this hang me if I don’t burn my book and agree with your mate, old Jacob Crimp, to believe in ghosts.’
I levelled the glass again and uttered an exclamation as I got the lenses to bear upon her. ‘By thunder, Finn! yes, they look to have the scent of us now. See! there goes her gaff topsail?’
Wilfrid caught my words. ‘What are they doing?’ he roared, bursting out in a mad way from his rapt iron-like silence; ‘making sail, d’ye say?’ and he came running up to us with an odd thrusting forward of his head as though straining to determine what was scarce more than a blur to his short sight. He snatched the glass from my hand. ‘Yes,’ he shouted, ‘and there goes her squaresail. By every saint, Finn, there’s an end of my doubts;’ and he closed the glass with a ringing of the tubes as he telescoped them that would have made you think that the thing was in pieces in his hands.
‘Shall I signal her to heave to, your honour?’ exclaimed Finn, speaking with a doubtful eye as if measuring the distance.
‘Ay, at once,’ cried Wilfrid, ‘but’—he cast a look at the gaff end—‘she’ll not see your colours there,’ pointing vehemently.
‘I’ll run ’em up at the fore, Sir Wilfrid; they’ll blow out plain there with the t’gallant halliards let go.’
‘Do as you will, only you must make her know my meaning,’ cried my cousin, and he went with an impetuous stride right aft and resumed his former sentinel posture. Miss Jennings came timidly up to me.