A cloud of canvas coming up astern hand over hand. Topsails, topgallantsails, royals, and skysails; the wind fresh off the beam; a topgallant-stunsail yearning from its boom end: the beautiful vision, a leaning light with the blue sea in foam betwixt it and the York, and beyond, the immeasurable heavens sloping past the working rim of the deep.
"A Yankee," said Hardy, putting down the glass. "Skysails—why not moonsails, and angels' footstools? D'ye know that you can sometimes stop a ship by cracking on? I've hove the log and found her doing ten: thought to get more out of her; set royals and topmast-stunsails: hove the log and found her doing nine. Why? Because a ship isn't built to sail on her side."
The galley fire was lighted; coffee was boiled; the sun shone brightly, and the ship astern was coming up fast. Whilst Julia held the wheel, Hardy mastheaded the red flag of our country at the gaff end, and there it streamed, meteoric, as in the song.
"It is like being in the Docks to see it," cried Julia.
"It is like feeling that there are no bally Dutchmen in the world!" answered Hardy.
They breakfasted in a manner afore-described, and often watched the ship astern. She was a black spot under a white cloud.
"Undoubtedly a Yankee," said Hardy, with his mouth full of white biscuit. "She'll wonder at us, and what will she do?"
"They must not help us," said Julia.
"Fancy her sailors sparkling with the jewels in the safe, fancy her skipper and mates singing out orders with heavy gold chains round their necks, and diamond earrings in their Yankee lobes! I do love the Yankee captain; he stands at the break of the poop and watches his mate kicking a man's brains out of his skull, and he yells out, 'Heave him over the side whilst he's breathing.' It is all sweetness and light aboard the Yankeeman. Some of these days the great Republic will awaken to recognition of the claims of her merchant sailors. The immortal Dana did his best, which was noble and lasting. But oh, the crimes, the cruelties, the murders which make the Yankee ship of trade a bitterer hell for men than the hell of the monk's invention!"
But a stern chase is a long chase, albeit you are under single-reef topsails and fore-course only, whilst t'other heaps your wake with skysails and stunsails. It was half-past nine before the ship astern was on the York's quarter; a black barque with an almost straight stem, taking the seas under her swelling heights with the springs and leaps of a deer chased by the hound.