The men sprang on deck. The order to set the studden-sails was given. The hands flew aloft, and before the Greek had got all his canvas up, the Ione had every stitch she could carry packed on her. This gave her an advantage, but the stranger was still far beyond the range of her long guns.
A stern chase is so proverbially a long chase, especially when the leading vessel happens to be the fastest, as there soon appeared reason to believe was the case in the present instance, that I will not weary the reader by describing it, but, for the present, will leave His Majesty’s ship Ione running under all sail, in chase of a suspicious craft, towards the island-studded shores of Greece.
Chapter Eighteen.
Never did the Ione go along at greater speed under the same canvas than she was doing in chase of the Greek brig; but fast as she went, she gained little, if anything, on the vessel she pursued. No two crafts could have been better matched. The chances were all, therefore, in favour of the escape of the latter. She was four miles ahead, and she kept that distance. She might carry away a mast or spar, and thus the Ione might come up with her; or it might fall calm, and she might be overhauled by the boats, but the pursuer was just as likely to receive some damage, and thus she had most to fear a calm. If she could manage to hold her own till night came on, she would be able to haul her wind on either tack with very little danger of being discovered. The officers walked the deck with impatient steps. It was provoking to have a vessel just ahead of them, and which they all felt almost sure was the one they were in search of, and yet be unable to come up with her.
“If we could but get her within range of our guns, there would be some satisfaction in peppering at her,” said Jemmy Duff, who, with several of his messmates had gone on the forecastle to have a better view of the chase. “I’d give a month’s pay to have only one slap at her.”
“That’s not any overwhelming sum, Jemmy, though,” observed Togle, laughing. “I’d give the whole of my half-pay for a year, and all the fortune you’re ever likely to leave me, to have her within range of our guns for ten minutes.”
“Mighty generous you are, indeed,” said Jack Raby. “By that way of reckoning, whoever got the half-pay would be sadly out of pocket, as a midshipman’s half-pay is nothing, and find himself; if he accepted the one, he would have to pay for your grub, and whoever gets Jemmy’s fortune won’t have much duty to pay, I’ll bet.”
“No; I must consider my rank in the service my fortune, whenever I have to propose to a young lady,” answered Duff, putting his hand on his heart, with a sentimental look. “But, I say, can’t we do something to get hold of that fellow ahead of us?”