‘She is the “Shark,” then?’ she said in a low voice.
‘All who know her are agreed, Finn says, saving here and there a doubt about the colour of her boats,’ I answered.
She had a sailor’s eye for sea effects, and instantly noticed that the schooner ahead had broadened her show of canvas.
‘Do they suspect who we are?’ she exclaimed, talking as though she were musing.
‘No doubt the “Bride” is recognised, and they will run away if they can.’
She looked at Wilfrid. ‘I do not like to speak to him,’ she exclaimed.
‘He’s killing Hope-Kennedy over and over again,’ said I: ‘his wife is before him too, and he is haranguing her. Bless us, what a wonderful thing human imagination is!’
Up went the signal flags forward in a string of balls, a man tugged, the bunting broke and streamed out in its variety of lustrous colours, every flag stiff as a sheet of horn handpainted, with the light of the sky past it showing through. I caught myself breathing short and hard whilst waiting for what was to follow this summons to the running craft. We had been crushing through it after her with the speed of a steamer, and, supposing her indeed to be the ‘Shark,’ had literally verified Wilfrid’s boast that the ‘Bride’ could sail two feet to her one. But now that she had broadened her wings there was a threat of considerable tediousness in the chase.
‘Do you suppose they have made out what yacht we are?’ I asked Finn.
‘Likely as not, sir. I shall think so for sartin if they don’t shorten sail on reading that bunting up there. A stranger ’ud be willing enough to speak us. Why not? ’Tis understandable that Fidler should have kept his rags small in the face of the muck that was crawling in the nor’rad this morning. He’s got nothen to chase, and was always a careful man, so I’ve heard, and I tell ye, sir,’ said he in a subdued way, speaking with his eyes fixed on Miss Jennings, who stood close with a white face, ‘that the sight of his easy canvas is almost the same to me as seeing of her ladyship a sitting there,’ levelling his hairy finger at the yacht, ‘for, fond as she was of the water, let anything of a breeze come and she was always for having Sir Wilfrid reduce sail.’ He put the glass to his eye as he spoke. ‘Hillo!’ he exclaimed in an instant, ‘they’re hoisting a colour. There it goes—there it blows. Oh my precious eyes! What is it? what is it?’ he rumbled, talking to himself and working into the glass as though he would drive an eye clean through it. ‘Why, Mr. Monson,’ he bawled, ‘I’m Field Marshal the Duke o’ Wellington, sir, if she han’t hoisted Dutch colours.’