“That won’t be long, I suspect,” said Job.
The conversation was cut short by a summons on deck. The frigate was nearing the chase. The whole of her hull could now be seen clearly from the deck. As to her character there was little doubt. She was a merchantman of considerable tonnage. However, as yet she showed no ensign at her peak by which her nation might be known. She was pronounced to be Dutch, French, Danish, and Spanish in turn. At last the captain thought of sending for some of the prisoners to give their opinion on the subject. The Spaniards did not take long before they declared their belief that she was one of the convoy to which they belonged, and if they were not mistaken she was very richly laden.
A scarcely suppressed shout ran round the decks as the fact became known.
“Ay, but we’ve not got her yet,” observed Hardman.
Both captain and crew looked as if they wished they could urge on the frigate by means more potent than the light breeze then blowing. What plans and projects might not even then have been working in that fertile brain! Still the chase did her best to escape.
“She has something to run for, or she would have given in before this,” observed the captain, rapidly walking up and down the deck, and eyeing his anticipated prize. “Her violent efforts to escape is a good sign, at all events.”
There was now no longer any doubt as to the character of the chase, for she hoisted the Spanish flag, though she still held on. That she could escape seemed impossible, and Lord Claymore was unwilling to fire, for fear of damaging her, not in consequence of tenderness towards her, but because he hoped in a short time that she would become his property.
“Perhaps she has some notion that she will haul aft her sheets and escape to windward of us,” observed the master.
“Not at all likely that she will make so hopeless an attempt,” answered Morton.
“No; but what do you say to the fellows blowing themselves up,” put in Hardman. “There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip; it is the only way by which they can disappoint us, unless they heave their cargo overboard, which they may have done already, by-the-by.”