The two midshipmen were standing aft, looking over the taffrail.
“I wish that I thought we should escape her,” answered Ronald; “but I say—look!—look!—what’s that out there?”
At that moment there was a break in the clouds, and through it a gleam of light fell on the lofty sails of a ship coming up within gunshot astern.
“The French frigate! I knew it would be so,” said the rough voice of old Rawson.
There could be little doubt that he was right. The stranger was supposed by the French officers on board to be the “Atalante,” a frigate of the same size as the “Concorde.” What hope then that the latter could successfully resist her? Not many men besides Tom Calder would have had any hope of escaping.
“Never cry out till you are caught,” was his motto on similar occasions.
“That vessel astern has not yet made us out,” he observed to Rawson. “Though should she prove to be the ‘Atalante,’ perhaps we may still escape her, or she may be a friend after all.”
“Not likely that last, sir,” said Rawson, “but whether friend or foe, here she comes! She has made us out clearly enough, too, that I’ll be sworn.”
For a short time the clouds had closed in, and the stranger was hidden from view, but they again breaking, she was seen like some huge dark monster, towering up towards the sky, surging onwards on the starboard quarter of the “Concorde.”
“We shall soon see now, sir, what she is,” observed Rawson to his superior.