He handed the glass as he spoke to the lieutenant, who took a long look through it.
“I can scarcely believe it possible; yet, Tracy, she appears to me remarkably like the Ouzel Galley,” observed Mr Foley.
“That is what I think she is, sir; but how she comes to be chasing another English vessel is mere than I can make out.”
While the lieutenant was speaking a flash was seen, and a shot flew from the vessel they were looking at towards the one ahead. Another and another followed from her bow-chasers, but the range was a long one, and they fell harmlessly into the water, under the counter of the ship at which they were fired.
“They were well aimed, and had they been fired from longer guns and with better powder, they would have hit their mark,” observed Lieutenant Foley.
“It won’t be long before the chase has some of those round shot aboard her,” observed the master. “The sternmost vessel is gaining on her fast, and unless she can manage to knock away some of the spars of the other, she must be overtaken in a few hours at most.”
Gerald had again got hold of the telescope. “I cannot make it out,” he exclaimed again and again. “I have just caught sight of her flag. It is black, with the death’s head and cross-bones. There is no mistaking her character; she is a pirate, but still I never saw a craft so like the Ouzel Galley. She has the same new cloth in her fore-topsail which she had when she last sailed from Port Royal, and a patch in the starboard clew of her main-topgallantsail. Can anything have happened to Owen Massey? He has not turned pirate; of that I am very certain.”
“I am afraid, then, Tracy, if that vessel is really the Ouzel Galley, she must have been captured by pirates,” observed Lieutenant Foley.
“I am dreadfully afraid that such must have been the case, sir,” answered Gerald, almost ready to burst into tears. “All I hope is that, though she is wonderfully like the Ouzel Galley, she is not her, after all. If she is, poor Owen, his officers and crew must have been murdered. Dear, dear! what will become of Norah when she hears of it?”
The two ships were now passing almost directly in front of the island; indeed, the chase had already got some way to the southward, the pirate ship—for that a pirate she was there could be no doubt—continually firing at her. Gerald walked up and down in a state of painful doubt and anxiety. Nat Kiddle remained with him, though getting very hungry and wishing to go back to the fort for breakfast. Mr Foley, who was almost as much interested as Gerald, was the only officer who remained with him.